Léon-Clément Gérard
Léon-Clément Gérard (18 March 1810 – 1 November 1876) was a churchman in the Val d'Aoste who became a cathedral canon in nearby Aosta. Within the church he came to prominence as a controversialist, notably on account of his long-standing record of theological and very public feuding with Félix Orsières to whose polemical Liberal Catholicism Gérard, alongside his colleagues within the Aosta cathedral establishment, he was strongly opposed. His church career culminated in his appointment as diocesan archpriest. It is, however, on account of his activities as a prolific writer, in particular of religious and regional publications, that he came to wider prominence.

In 1859/1860 Aosta became part of Italy. Despite an energetic campaign of population shifting and language suppression under Mussolini, the French language is still very widely spoken in the Val d'Aoste. In the nineteenth century variations of French dominated overwhelmingly. In his published output Gérard used French.
Q1222
Val d'Aoste
LOC
Q1104153
cathedral canon
Concept
Q978797
Aosta
LOC
Félix Orsières
UNK
Q7882537
Liberal Catholicism
UNK
Q866881
Aosta cathedral establishment
LOC
Q1190552
diocesan archpriest
Concept
Q540978
1859/1860
EVE
Q1222
Aosta
LOC
Q51122
part of Italy
Concept
Q1675071
population shifting and language suppression
UNK
Q48742118
under Mussolini
LOC
Q16637037
French language
MEDIA
Q1222
Val d'Aoste
LOC
Q15087
variations of French
Concept
Q150
French
Concept
Q19947461
Léon-Clément Gérard
PER
1810-03-18T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
18 March 1810
DATE
1876-11-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1 November 1876
DATE
1859-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1859
DATE
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1860
NUMBER
occupation
date of birth
position held
native language
indigenous to