Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/456

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398

OAULTIER


398


OAtJME


him in design and colouring. Early in life he went to Rome and became a pupil of Bernini and Mario Nuzzi da Fiori, whose assistance and recommendation laid the foundation of his fortune and reputation. A considerable part of his life was given over tt) portrait painting. He is said to have executed paintings of seven pontiffs — from Alexandria VII to Clement XI — and of all the cardinals of his time. His paintings of children show much grace and vivacity. His greatest merit, however, lies in his historical compositions, which show good arrangement, agreeable colouring, and a spirited touch. Sometimes his work was in- correct and heavy, and his draperies too stiff. He understood the art of foreshortening his figures in a marked degree, as shown by his work in the angles of the dome of S. Agnese, in the Palazzo Navona. His chief work is the painting of the "Assumption of St. Francis Xavier", in the vault of the church of the Gesu, Rome. This picture is celebrated for the bold- ness and truth of the foreshortening, and the brilliancy of the colouring. Another celebrated work is the "Virgin and Child, surrounded by angels, with St. Anne kneeling in front"; it is in the church of S. Francesco a Ripa; and in the church of Sant' Andrea there is an altarpiece by GauUi of the " Death of St. Francis Xavier". GauUi's facility of composition, rapidity of hand, and clear bright style rendered his mural paintings verj' attractive to his contemporaries; but these works are now considered as belonging to an essentially superficial style of art. He is one of the painters called by his countrymen Macchinisti. His faults are less obtrusive in his easel pictures, and his manner more varied.

PiLKiNGTON. Did. of Painters (London, MDCCCLII); Mac- kenzie, Imperial Diet. Univ. Biog. (London, Glasgow. Edin- burgh); Bryan, Diet. Painters and Engravers (New York, London, 1903). THOMAS H. PooLE.

Gaultier, Aloisius-Edouard-C.\mille, priest and schoolmaster; b. at Asti, Piedmont, about 1745, of French parents; d. at Paris, 18 Sept., 1818; began his studies in France, and completed them in Rome, where he was ordained ; upon his return to France _( 1780) he devoted himself to the work of education and in 1786 opened a school in Paris, wherein he applied his principle of instructing children while amusing them. The French Revolution obliged him to seek refuge in England, and, finding in London a number of his former pupils of the French nobility, he opened a course for the education of French refugees. His principles were greatly admired and his methods com- mended by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He came back to France in 1801, and continued to teach and publish his educational works. Later an- other journey to London was undertaken for the pur- pose of studving the monitorial system of teaching, practised byBell and Lancaster, a system which he wanted to introduce into the French schools. During the Hundred Days, Carnot appointed him a member of the commission for the reorganization of public instruction, and later Gaultier was one of the founders of the "Society pour I'enseignement 61ementaire ".

To give a complete list of Gaultier's works is impos- sible here. They include text-books for every branch of primary instruction, reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, geography, history, logical and grammati- cal analysis, composition, politeness, etc., and they ap- ply hLs method of instructive plays, that is, a system of questions and answers in which, according to the correctness or incorrectness of the answers, a scheme of loss and gain in credits constantly stimulates the in- terest of the pupils. While, from the point of view of modern pedagogy, this method has many obvious de- fects, especially that of being too mechanical and of insisting too much on mere memory, it was neverthe- less an advance on methods previously used, and it acknowledged, though carrying it to excess, the great importance of the principle of interest in education.


It must be supplemented by the application of the psychological principles of adaptation, reflection, and assimilation.

Kourelle biographic generale (Paris. IS.IS). XIX, 676; Buls- 80N. Dictionnaire de pedagogic (Paris, 1887). I, i, 1146.

C. A. DUBRAY.

Gaume, Jean-Joseph, French theologian and author, b. at Fuans (Franche-Comt^) in 1802; d. in 1879. While attached to the Diocese of Nevers, he was successively professor of theology, director of the petit sctninaire, canon, and vicar-general of the diocese, and had already published several works, when he left for Rome in 1841. Gregorj- XVI made him a knight of the Reformed Order of St. Sylvester. A doctor of theology of the L'niversity of Prague, a member of several societies of scholars, honorary vicar-general of several dioceses, he received from Pius IX in 1854 the title of prothonotary apostolic.

Abb6 Gaunie is the author of numerous books treat- ing of theology, history, education. Those of the first category are still esteemed, those of the second have fallen into oblivion, and those of the third gave rise to the famous question of the classics. These last writings are all inspired by one and the same thought; vividly struck by the religious and moral deterioration of his age, the author seeks its remote cause, and believes he finds it in the Renaissance, which was for society a resurrection of the paganism of antiquity, prepared the way for the Revolution, and was, in fine, the primal source of all the evil. Such is the dominating idea of the works " La Revolution" (8 vols., 185G) and " Histoire de la society domestique" (2 vols., 1854). It is again met with in "Les Trois Rome" (1857). But to cure the ills of society it was necessary to devise a new method of moulding child- hood and youth; this was to consist in catechetical instruction and the exclusion of pagan authors from classical studies. In support of this method he composed his "CatSchisme de Perseverance, ou Ex-


(1859); "Traite de I'Esprit series of works belong his "Manuel du Confesseur" (1854) and "I'Horloge de la Passion" (1857), which he translated from St. Alphonsus Liguori.

The reform, or rather the revolution — the word is his — which he deemed necessary in classic instruction he had indicated as early as 1835 in his book "Le Catholicisme dans I'education", without arousing much comment. He returned to the subject in 1851 in a work entitled " Le Ver rongeur des societes mo- dernesoulePaganisme dans ['Education". The renown of the author, still more the patronage of two influ- ential prelates — Mgr. Gousset, Archbishop of Reims, and Mgr. Parisis, Bishop of Arras — and above all the articles of Louis Veuillot in " L'Univers", which supported Abbe Gaume from the first, gained for his views a hearing which they had previously failed to secure, and provoked a lively controversy among Catholics. After having shown that the intellectual formation of youth during the first centuries of the Church and throughout the Middle Ages was accom- plished through the study of Christian authors (ch. i- vi), Gaume proceeds to prove that the Renaissance of the sixteenth century perverted education through- out Europe by the substitution of pagan writers for Christian authors. In support of his thesis, he brings forward the testimony of men (viii-ix) and of facts (x-xxv), indicating the influence of classical paganism on literature, speech, the arts, philosophy, religion, the family, and society. Despite a proportion of truth, the exaggeration of his thesis was evident. It was the condemnation of the method held in honour in the Church for three centuries; Benedictines, Jesuits, Oratorians, the secular clergy them.selves had, with- out opposition from the Holy See, niaile the pagan