Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise, vicomte de
Bonald

born
Oct. 2, 1754, Le Monna, near Millau, Fr.
died Nov. 23, 1840, Le Monna
political philosopher and statesman who,
with the French Roman Catholic thinker
Joseph de Maistre, was a leading
apologist for Legitimism, a position
contrary to the values of the French
Revolution and favouring monarchical and
ecclesiastical authority.
Mayor
of Millau from 1785 to 1789, Bonald
became president of the district of
Aveyron’s administration in 1790 but
resigned the next year in protest
against the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy. Passed by the new Constituent
Assembly of the nation, that reform was
rejected by the pope, most of the French
clergy, and King Louis XVI for the
restraints that it put upon the Roman
Catholic church in France. Emigrating to
Heidelberg, Bonald was soon condemned by
the revolutionary Directory for his
highly royalist Théorie du pouvoir
politique et religieux (1796; “Theory of
Political and Religious Power”). In 1797
he returned to France, where he wrote
his Essai analytique sur les lois
naturelles de l’ordre social (1800;
“Analytical Essay on the Natural Laws of
Social Order”); Du divorce (1801); and
Législation primitive considérée . . .
par les seules lumières de la raison, 3
vol. (1802; “Primitive Legislation
Considered . . . by the Light of Reason
Alone”).
After
the exile of Napoleon and the
restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in
1814, Bonald became a member of the
council of public instruction (1814),
was nominated to the Académie Française
(1816), and was created vicomte (1821)
and peer (1823). During these years he
wrote Réflexions sur l’intérêt général
de l’Europe (1815; “Reflections on the
General Interest of Europe”) and
Démonstration philosophique du principe
constitutif de la société (1830;
“Philosophical Demonstration of the
Formative Principle of Society”). With
the advent of the July Revolution of
1830, Bonald resigned his peerage and
retired to spend the last years of his
life at the château Le Monna.