Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet (June 17, 1797 -
May 4, 1847), was a Swiss
critic and theologian.
He was born near Lausanne in Switzerland. Educated for
the Protestant ministry, he was ordained in 1819, when
already teacher of the French language and literature in the gymnasium at
Basel; and throughout his life he was as much a critic as a theologian. His literary criticism
brought him into contact with Augustin Sainte-Beuve, for whom he obtained
an invitation to lecture at Lausanne, which led to his famous work on Port-Royal.
Vinet's Chrestomathie française (1829), his Études sur la littérature française au XIXe
siècle (1840-51), and his Histoire de la littérature française au XVIIe siècle, together
with his Études sur Pascal, Études sur les moralistes aux XVe et
XVIe siècles, Histoire de la prédication parmi les Réformes de France and other related
works, gave evidence of a wide knowledge of literature, acute literary judgment and a distinguished faculty of appreciation. He
adjusted his theories to the work under review, and condemned nothing as long as it met his literary standards.
As a theologian Vinet gave a fresh impulse to Protestant theology, especially in
French-speaking lands, but also in England and elsewhere. Lord Acton classed him with Richard
Rothe. His philosophy relied strongly on conscience, defined as that by which man stands in direct personal relation with
God as moral sovereign, and the seat of a moral individuality which nothing can rightly infringe. He
advocated complete freedom of religious belief, and to this end the formal separation of church and state (Mémoire en faveur
de la liberté des cultes (1826), Essai sur la conscience (1829), Essai sur la manifestation des convictions
religieuses (1842).
Accordingly, when in 1845 the civil power in the canton of Vaud interfered with the church's autonomy, he led a
secession which took the name of L'Église libre. But already from 1831, when he published his Discours sur quelques sujets
religieux (Nouveaux discours, 1841), he had begun to exert a liberalizing and deepening influence on religious thought
far beyond his own canton, by bringing traditional doctrine to the test of a living personal experience (see also
Gaston Frommel). In this he resembled FW
Robertson, as also in the change which he introduced into pulpit style and in the permanence of his influence. Vinet died
at Clarens (Vaud). A considerable part of his work was not printed till after his death.
His life was written in 1875 by Eugène Rambert, who re-edited the Chrestomathie
in 1876. See also LM Lane, Life and Writings of A. Vinet (1890); L Molines, Etude sur Alexandre Vinet (Paris,
1890); V Rossel, Histoire de la littérature française hors de France (Lausanne, !895); V Rivet, Études sur les
origines de la pensée religieuse de Vinet (Paris, 1896); A Schumann, Alex. Vinet (1907). A uniform edition of his
works was begun in 1908.
References
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