Jean-Jacques Olier - Early Life

Early Life

Olier was born in Paris, but the family moved to Lyon, where his father had become a judge. There he was given a thorough education in the classics at the local Jesuit college (1617–25). He was encouraged to become a priest by St. Francis de Sales, who predicted his sanctity and great services to the Catholic Church.

In preparation for this career, Olier first studied philosophy at the College of Harcourt in Paris, then scholastic theology and patristics at the Collège de Sorbonne. He preached during this period, through the income he received from a benefice which his father had obtained for him. The young student became a man of great ambition; he also frequented fashionable society, which caused anxiety to those interested in his spiritual welfare. His success in defending theses in Latin and Greek led him to go to Rome for the purpose of learning Hebrew so as to gain greater notice by being able to defend his theses in that language at the Sorbonne.

When his eyesight began to fail, Olier made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Holy House in Loreto, Italy, where his official biographies attest not only to a cure, but also a complete religious conversion. For a time he considered entering the Carthusians, and visited the charterhouses in southern Italy. Upon the news of his father's death in 1631, however, he returned to Paris. Once back in the capital, he refused a chaplaincy at the royal court, with its prospect of high honours. Instead he gathered the poor and the outcast on the streets for instruction in the Catholic faith, a practice which was at first derided but soon widely imitated. Under the guidance of St. Vincent de Paul, Olier both assisted de Paul's missionaries, both in Paris and the rural countryside, while he prepared for Holy Orders, being ordained 21 May 1633.