Marquis de Condorcet (1743) It was on this date, September 17, 1743, that French mathematician and political philosopher Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, was born in Ribemont, Picardy, France. His father died early, so his mother, a very devout woman, had Condorcet educated at Jesuit Colleges in Reims and at the Collège […]

Jacques-Louis David (1748) On this date, August 30, 1748, that the most important European painter of the French Revolutionary period, from 1785-1815, Jacques-Louis David, was born into the Parisian merchant class. David's father must have been both prideful and foolish, because he died in a duel when his son was 10. Educated at the Académie […]

“I was never a believer, but after seeing Czech Catholics persecuted during the Stalinist terror, I felt the deepest solidarity with them. What separated us, the belief in God, was secondary to what united us.”