Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/140

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113


LE Fivas


1908-00, at a cost of upwards of £18,000. Provision Das also been made, during this period, for the higher education of girls at Sheffield, Leeds, and Bradfoid — the Leeds Centre and Teachers' Training College, under the care of the Sisters of Notre Dame (Namur), representing an outlay of about £15,000.

Among the 35 religious houses for women, within the Diocese of Leeds, special interest attaches to the seventeenth-centurv Bar Convent, of the Institute of Mary, in York, rich in Catholic associations and in relics of the English martyrs. Of the numerous churches more recently built, particular mention should be made of the cathedral, dedicated to St. Anne, and erected at Leeds, in 1902-04, from the de- signs of J. U. Eastwood, A. R. I. B. A., a small but unique example of developed Gothic"; and, among the churches of earlier date architecturally remarkable, St. Mary's, Sheffield (1850) and St. Mary's, Leeds (1857), are both fine examples of the Gothic revival of the last century. And with these mav be associated St. Edward's, Clinord (1850), a small church in the Nor- man style, worthy of the ages of Faith, erected prin- cipally through the piety of descendants of the Vener- able Kalph Grimston, martyred under Elizabeth at

York, in 1598.

Dioeeaan Archives of Beverley and Leeds* Bkadt, Englith Catholic Hierarchy (London, 1883); Wauoh, The Leeds Missions (London, 1904); Lanb-Fox, Chronicles of a Wharf eddLe Parish (Fort Augustufl, 1909).

N, Waugh.

LefebTre, Camille, Apostle of tha Acadians, b. at St. Philippe, P, Q., 1831; d. at St. Joseph, N. B., 1895. The son of sturdy French-Canadian peasants, he at- tended the village school and academy until he was seventeeil, became a primary teacher for several half- yearly^ terms, prosecuted his study of Latin at St. Cyprien, ana m 1852 entered the Congregation of the Holy Cross, at St. Laurent, near ^lontreal. Or- dained priest in 1855, he served 8ucce^^sively as curate at St. Eustache and St. Rose, professor at St. Lau- rent College, and missionary in the Diocese of SU Hyacinth, this last office coming to him as the nat- ural result of his quite exceptional ability as a pulpit orator. His real life-work, however, began only in 1864, when, in accordance with an agreement be- tween .his religious superiors and Bishop Sweeney of St. John, he took charge of the principal Acadian j)ar- ish, Memramcook, N. B., and forthwith began the foundation of St. Joseph's College. Half a century ago, the French Acadians of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island were admittedlv an unimportant factor in the social life and polity of those provinces. From the time of the great expulsion in 1755, they had been constructively deprived of all means of instruction, in public, professional, or even commercial life; in consequence, an Acadian name rarely if ever became prominent. Unquestionably looked down upon by their English and non-Catholic neighbours as a race naturally inferior to Anglo-Saxons and Celts, they aoparentlv acquiesced in the fate that doomed them to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. With the advent among them of Father Lefebvre and the establishment of St. Joseph's Col- lege, there dawned a new era, and in the brief space of three decades there was wrought a veritable transfor- mation.

Ilianks mainly to his initiative, his personal service^ and the enthusiasm with which he imbued his fellow- workers in the collie and the leaders of the people themselves, Father lifebvre lived to see the practical servitude and inferiority in which he found the Aca- dians replaced by genuine equality and freedom. In ever-increasing numbers his students t<x)k prominent places in the business, educational, or professional world, gave themselves to the altar or pleaded at the bar, entered the provincial legislative assemblies and tbe federal parliament, and graced the bench of the


Supreme Court. From 1864 to 1875 the "Apostle of the Acadians" encountered trials, reverses, and diffi- culties which nothing but indomitable energy, coupled with imwavering confidence in God, could nave en- abled him to survive. During these years, in addition to his duties as college president and pastor of Mem- ramcook, he preached missions throughout Acadia, served several terms as Provincial of his Congregation, founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, and was honoured with the decree of Doctor of Divinity by Laval University and the title of Apostolic Missionary b^ Pius IX. His death occurred in Jan uary , 1 895; and within two years St. Joseph's Alumni erected at Mem- ramcook in his honour a handsome §tonc edifice, the Lefebvre Memorial Hall. "After God", says his Acadian biographer, "he loved especially the (jongre- ^ation of the Holy Cross and the Acadian people. He IS perhaps the purest glory of the former: he is cer- tainly the greatest benefactor of the latter.

PoXRUCR, Le Phre Lefeivre H VAcadie (Montreal, 1898); SoRiN, Circular Ldters (Notro Dainc. Ind., 1880); Album Souvenir (Montreal, 1894).

Arthub Bakry O'Neill.

Lefdvre, Family op. — ^There were various members of the Lefdvre family engage<l in tapestry weaving in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We hear of one Lancelot Lef db vre as one of the masters of tapestry weaving in Brussels and in Antwerp in 1655; and in Italy, in 1630, we read of a certain Pierre le Fdvre, a master tapestry worker, w^ho was a native of Paris. It is not known whether these two men were con- nected one with the other, and of their personal his- tory we know very little. Pierre died in 1669, leaving a son Philip, who was working in Florence in 1677. In 1647, Pierre was attracted by some offers made him on the part of Henry IV of France, and left Florence for Paris. There he received considerable emolu- ments, was styled Tapissier to the Iving, and provided with a workshop in the Garden of the Tuileries. He is known to have gone back to Florence in 1650, but to have returned to Paris five years later; he probably lived in Florence for about ten years, returnmg there for the last short period of his life. His son Jean, who came with him, does not appear to have ever quitted France, and he had the signal honour, on the estab- lislmient of the Gobelin factory, of directing with Jean Jans the high warp looms. Jans was a Flemish weaver, but had come to Paris to work in the royal buildings in 1654, and he had charge of the largest workshop of the new factory, giving employment to sixty-seven weavers, exclusive of apprentices. The second workshop, which was erected in the Garden of the Tuileries, was the one conducted by Jean Le- fcvre, and he appears to have had full charge of it until 1770, and to have earned for the Government a very large sum of money. The fine tapestry entitled "The Toilet of a Princess", which was in the Spitzer collection, was the work of Jean Lefdvre, and three other pieces, representing Bacchanalia, bear his name on their selvedge. One of his most wonderful works was entitled " The Toilet of Flora *\ a sheet of tapestry now preserved at the Garde-meuble. Cardinal Maz- arin possessed one of his hangings entitled "The His- tory of St. Paul", and he was probably largely re- sponsible for the two series entitled "The History of Louis XIV", and "The History of Alexander".

MuNTZ, History of Tapestry (London, 1885); Thomson, His- tory of Tapestry (London, 1906); Lacordaire, Notice hv^to- rigue sur Us Manufactures impiriale^ de Topiaseriet des Oobdins (Faris, 1853, 1873), various articles in La Oazeite des Beaux Arts.

Gkorge Chakles Williamson. Lefdvre, IIoNonF. See FAimi.

Le Fdvre, Jacques, a French theologian and con- troversialist, b. at Lisieux towards the middle of the seventeenth century; d. 1 July, 1716, at Paris. He became archdeacon of Ids native city and vicur-general of the Archbishopric of Bourges, and in 1674 received