Biographical Note
Biographical Note
Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges (1863-1948)
Born in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand on November 16, 1863, A. G. Sertillanges entered the Dominican Order twenty years later, taking the religious name Dalmatius. In 1888, he was ordained a priest.
After completing his studies and teaching for a few years, Fr. Sertillanges was appointed secretary of the prestigious scholarly journal Revue Thomiste. In 1900, he became professor of moral theology at the Catholic Institute in Paris, where he taught for twenty years. Later, Fr. Sertillanges taught elsewhere in France and also in Holland. During his year-long stay in Jerusalem in 1923, he was inspired to write What Jesus Saw from the Cross.
His classic book The Intellectual Life explains the methods, conditions, habits, and virtues that are necessary in the intellectual life. These virtues bore great fruit in Fr. Sertillanges’ own life, enabling him to become a widely recognized expert in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and to write many books and more than a thousand articles in the areas of philosophy, theology, art, and spirituality.
But Fr. Sertillanges was far more than a professor and scholar. During his lifetime, he was widely admired for his skill as a preacher, a spiritual director, and an apologist, and was particularly successful in presenting the Faith in compelling terms to the young and to the unconverted.
No “ivory tower” intellectual, but first and foremost a passionate son of the Church, Fr. Sertillanges wrote numerous works that bridge the gap that often yawns today between academic theology and the everyday faith of the ordinary layman.
The fruit of both hard study and devout prayer, and motivated by the desire to preach Catholic truth usque ad mortem (“unto death,” in the words of the Dominican motto), the works of Fr. Sertillanges are now informing and inspiring yet another generation of readers in these times of theological uncertainty and moral disarray.