Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin was one of the chief apostles of St Simonianism. He was born in 1796 at Paris and died in 1864. In 1825 he became acquainted with St Simon, who in dying confided to him the task of continuing the work. This he did with success until after the revolution of 1830, when, as the representative of the social and religious theories of the school, he quarrelled with Bazard, the representative of its political ideas. Barthelemy Enfantin organized model communities, which quickly fell to pieces; the new organ of the sect, the Globe, was a failure;
their convent at Menilmontant, of which Enfantin was 'supreme father,' was broken up by the government in 1832. He himself was imprisoned as an offender against public morality (being an advocate of free love), and on his release attempted to found a model colony in Egypt, which was broken up in the second year. He then retired to Tain (Drome), where he lived for some time as a farmer. In 1841 he was sent as member of a commission to explore the industrial resources of Algiers, and on his return published a work on the Colonization of Algiers (1848). On the revolution of 1848 he started a new journal, the Credit Public, but after two years withdrew from public notice. He held latterly a post on the Lyons and MediterraneanRailway until his death in 1864. Research Barthelemy Enfantin