FARGES, ALBERT

Sulpician philosopher and theologian; b. Beaulieu, department of Corrèze, France, 1848; d. Beaulieu, June 9, 1926. Farges entered the Sulpician seminary in Paris and was ordained in 1872. After teaching in the seminaries of Bruges and Nantes, he filled the position of director of a seminary in Paris for 14 years. In 1896 he became professor of philosophy at the Institut Catholique in Paris and at the Sulpician seminary at Issy. He then became superior of the seminary in Angers.

Two of his works are an outgrowth of lectures in ascetical and mystical theology given at Angers between 1899 and 1905: Les Phénomènes mystiques, distingués de leurs contrefaçons humaines et diaboliques (Paris 1920) and Les Voies ordinaires de la vie spirituelle (Paris 1925). For both treatises his declared authorities are SS. Teresa and Thomas Aquinas. Farges' greatest contribution was in furthering the revival of Thomistic studies at the end of the 19th century. Under the general title Études philosophiques pour vulgariser les théories d'Aristote et de S. Thomas et leur accord avec les sciences (9 v. Paris 1885–1907) he produced a series of individual works devoted to the restoration of Thomism, for which he was highly praised by the French Academy and by Leo XIII. With a fellow Sulpician, Désiré Barbedette, Farges published a compendium of scholastic philosophy in French and Latin that had many editions.

Bibliography: p. pourrat, Catholicisme 4:1100–01.

[m. s. conlan]