Schmitz-Moormann Teilhard de Chardin Collection

The collection consists of photocopied/transcribed correspondence, manuscripts, and journals related to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, as collected by Karl and Nicole Schmitz-Moorman.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born May 1, 1881, at the Chateau de Sarcenat at Orcines. His secondary education was completed at the Jesuit college at Mongre near Villefrance-sur-Saone and he began his studies at the Jesuit novitiate at Aix-en-Provence in 1899. From 1901 he continued his Jesuit education in Laval and later in Jersey and Ore Place near Hastings in Sussex, after the Law of Associations was enacted in France. In 1911 he was ordained. After ordination he studied paleontology in Paris under Marcellin Boule and was given permission to devote himself full-time to paleontological work in 1919. From 1923 to 1946 he spent a large portion of his time based in Tianjin and Beijing, China, conducting geological and paleontological expeditions in northern and western China as well as Mongolia and modern-day Myanmar. Returning to France at the end of WWII, he continued this work although forbidden by Rome to give public lectures or publish philosophical works beginning in 1924. After comments made at the Cercle des Intellectueles Catholiques in 1947, Teilhard de Chardin was silenced on all philosophical topics by the Jesuit Superior General so that he would not be condemned by Rome. Not until after his death in 1955 were the majority of his works published.

Fr. Teilhard de Chardin kept handwritten journals in what are known as cahiers, or French school copybooks, beginning in 1915 "to while away the boredom of quartering and to oblige [him] to think, to observe and to clarify." In all, he maintained 21 journals from 1915 until his death in 1955. Today original notebooks I-IX are kept with members of his family, the legal heirs, while notebooks X-XII were left behind in China and have yet to be located. Notebooks XIII–XXI are kept with the Society of Jesus in France. The collection contains transcriptions of cahiers I-IX and XIII-XXI.