Rabardeau, Michel

Rabardeau, Michel a French Jesuit, was born at Orleans in 1572, and became a member of the order in 1595. He had enjoyed the very best educational facilities, and was therefore employed by the Society in its schools. He taught philosophy and moral theology, and became successively rector of Bourges and of Amiens. He died at Paris in 1649. He is celebrated especially for his mastery of casuistry and his intimate knowledge of the canon law. In the domain of the latter he displayed his power in 1640, when Hersaut the Oratorian sought a schism in the Church of France by his work Optati Galli de Cavendo Schismate, after cardinal Richelieu had attempted the assumption of the patriarchate. Rabardeau, in his Optatus Gallus Benigno Janu Sectus (Paris, 1641, 4to), defended the cardinal, and tried to prove that such an assumption bore in it no trace of a schism, as the patriarchates of Jerusalem and Constantinople in nowise interfered with the power of the Roman papacy and its supreme authority. Of course, at Rome the book was displeasing, and was put into the Index. See Sotwell, Bibl. Scriptor. Soc. Jesu. — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, s.v.