Introduction

0.1WhatThisBook Is About

This book has adouble goal. The first is to study alargely neglected part of the scientificoeuvreofAlfred Loisy (1857–1940);the second is to use this scholar’s work as awindow into the development and the dynamics of history of religions as ascientific discipline during the first two decades of the 20th century.Best known as the “Father of RomanCatholic Modernism,”¹ this French priest and scholarofancient Judaism and earlyChristianitywas one of the protagonists of the Modernist crisis in the Church in the first decade of the 20th century. Loisy famouslydeveloped an intellectual reform program for aprofound mod- ernization of Catholicism, with the aim to make it more compatible with the results of his critical historical research, and with modern society at large.His reform endeavorwas forcefullyrejected by the Church and led to his excommu- nication in 1908, when he was labelled vitandus. In 1909,after an intenselypo- lemical election campaign, he was appointed to the chair of Histoire des Reli- gions at the CollègedeFrance. There, he developedarich but as yetlargely underexploredcareer as an independent scholar,until his official retirement in 1932. Alfred Loisy’sintellectual legacyhas receiveddetailed scholarlyattention almost without interruption since the 1960s, when Émile Poulat initiated the modern studyofRomanCatholic Modernism.² Thus far,scholarship has tendedto concentrate on his role in the Modernist crisis, and has predominantlyfocused on his achievementsintheologyand biblical criticism.³ Yet, bothasaCatholic,

 Amongthe manyscholars whohaveused this expression, see Friedrich Heiler, Alfred Loisy. Der Vater des katholischen Modernismus (München: Erasmus,1947).  Seminal studies on Loisy by Poulat include his Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste (Paris:Casterman, 1979), first published in 1962; and Critique et mystique. Autour de Loisy ou la conscience catholique et l’esprit moderne (Paris:leCenturion, 1984). Poulat also editedand published Loisy’sbiographybyAlbert Houtin and Félix Sartiaux: Albert Houtin and Félix Sar- tiaux, Alfred Loisy.Savie—son œuvre (Paris:CNRS,1960). Giventhe strained relations between Loisy and these biographers,this document is one to be interpreted with great caution. Forits complex history,see the introductionbyÉmile Poulat,atpagesv–xi.  The literatureonLoisy’sModernist writings is vast.Amongmanyexcellent studies,the inter- estedreadermay consult the studies of Émile Poulat mentioned in the previous note,aswellas: PierreColin, L’Audace et le soupçon: la crise moderniste dans le catholicisme français (1893– 1914) (Paris:Desclée de Brouwer, 1997); C.J.T. Talar, (Re)reading,Reception, and Rhetoric.Ap- proaches to Roman CatholicModernism (New York: Peter Lang, 1999); Émile Goichot, Alfred Loisy et ses amis (Paris:Cerf, 2002); Harvey Hill, ThePolitics of Modernism, Alfred Loisy and https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110584356-004 2 Introduction and later as an independent scholar, Loisy was also particularlyactive in the comparative study of religion. Although comparativereligion is avital thread running through most of his work, his contribution to this field of inquiry has often been overlooked.⁴ In the last few years, however,anincreasingnumber of studies has been devoted to Loisy’scomparative scholarship, both before and after 1908.⁵ In 2018, Jeffrey Morrow published the first comprehensive studyofyounger Loisy’scontribution to the fieldsofAssyriologyand the comparative studyofthe Old Testament between roughly1880 –1900.⁶ At present,no such reliable encompassingstudyisavailable on the development of his compa-

the Scientific Study of Religion (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press,2002);the contributions to François Laplanche, Ilaria Biagioli, and Claude Langlois, eds., Autour d’un petit livre. Alfred Loisy cent ans après (Turnhout: Brepols,2007); Claus Arnold and Giacomo Losito, eds., La Censure d’Alfred Loisy (1903). Les documents des Congrégations de l’Index et du Saint Office (Vatican: Libreria EditriceVaticana, 2009). Last but certainlynot least,weshould also mention Loisy’sautobiographicalaccounts of his roleinthe Modernist crisis: Choses passées (Paris:Nourry,1913) and his monumental Mémoires pour servir àl’histoirereligieuse de notre temps,3vols.(Paris,Nourry,1930 – 1931). We will return to the difficulties in interpreting his autobiographical writings in our first chapter.  This is the case in most of the aforementioned studies focusingonLoisy’sModernist work, but his name is also onlybrieflymentioned in seminal historical surveysofcomparative religion, likeEric Sharpe’s ComparativeReligion. AHistory (London: Duckworth, 1986), 168, or Jonathan Z. Smith’s DrudgeryDivine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago:University of Chicago Pres, 1990), 42.  Amongthe first to drawattention to this point,are the followingtwo studies by Ivan Strenski in which Loisy’scomparative work receivesample attention: Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, Na- tionalism and Social Thought (Chicago:Chicago University Press,2002) and Theology and the FirstTheoryofSacrifice (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Furthermore, the followingrecent publications de- servespecial mentioning: François Laplanche, La Crise de l’origine;Laplanche, Biagioli, and Langlois, eds., Alfred Loisy cent ans après;the contributions to Frédéric Amsler,ed., “Dossier: Quelle placepour Alfred Loisy dans l’histoire de la recherche en exégèse biblique et en sciences des religions?” Special issue, Mythos.Rivista di storia delle religioni 7(2013): 9–143. Also inter- estingbut with apredominant focus on Loisy’sexegetical work post 1908 arePeter Klein, Alfred Loisy als Historiker des Urchristentums. Grundzüge seiner neutestamentlichen Arbeit (Bonn: Rhei- nische Friedrich-Wilhelmsuniversität,1977) and Alan H. Jones, Independence and Exegesis. The Study of Early Christianity in the Work of Alfred Loisy (1857–1940), Charles Guignebert (1867– 1939) and Maurice Goguel (1880–1955) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck: 1983). In the context of our edition of Loisy’scorrespondencetothe Belgian historian of religions Franz Cumont (for all de- tails,see infra in this introduction), Corinne Bonnet,DannyPraet,and Ihaverecentlypublished several studies of Loisy’scomparative religion. Forall references,see our introduction to ‘Mon cher Mithra’… La correspondance entre FranzCumont et Alfred Loisy (Paris:Académie des In- scriptions et Belles-Lettres,2019), i–lv.  Jeffrey Morrow, Alfred Loisy &Modern Biblical Studies (Washington D.C.: The Catholic Univer- sity of America Press). 0.1WhatThisBook Is About 3 rative methodsduring his career at the CollègedeFrance.⁷ The present book in- tends to fill this lacuna. Upon hisappointment to the CollègedeFrance,Loisy wasofficiallyintegrated in thesecular academic studyofreligioninFrance.Thisbranchofthe science laïque hadbeeninstitutionalized at the CollègedeFrance in 1879,and at the ÉcolePratiquedes HautesÉtudes in 1886,asanintegralpartofthe laicizationpol- iticsofthe young Third Republic.⁸ The events in France werepart of awider Eu- ropean trend, even if there werelarge national differences in the specific institutional contexts.⁹ In the course of the long nineteenth century,the academic study of religion (cf. “sciences religieuses,”“godsdienstwetenschappen,”“Religions- wissenschaft,”“scienza delle religioni,” etc.) had progressively detached itself from the disciplines of theology, philology, and philosophy. Starting from the 1870s, it was institutionalized as an independent academic discipline at several European universities (for example, 1873: Geneva; 1877:Leyden, Utrecht,Gronin- gen, Amsterdam; 1878:Uppsala; 1884:Brussels),¹⁰ even if in some national set-

 This period is covered in Houtin and Sartiaux’s Alfred Loisy,but their account is polemic (cf. note 2).  See infra,chapter 2for the extensive bibliography on the institutionalization of the Sciences religieuses (in contrast to the Sciences sacrées performed at the faculties of theology)inlate 19th century France.  Amuch debated question was whether or not the new chairs weretobeintegrated in the faculties of theology or in the faculties of letters and/or history,orevenwhether the academic “sciences of religion” should substitutethe faculties of theology entirely, as was the case in France. The makingofthe academic studyofreligion and its very specific religious and political national backgrounds have been the object of detailed scholarlyattention. Amongmanyfine studies, we referthe interested readertoWalter Capps, Religious Studies:the Making of aDiscipline (Min- neapolis:Fortress Press, 1995); Arie L. Molendijkand Peter Pels, eds., Religion in the Making:The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Hans G. Kippenberg, Discovering Re- ligious Historyinthe Modern Age,trans. Barbara Harshav(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Gerard Wiegers, ed., Modern Societies &The Science of Religions.Studies in Honour of Lammert Leertouwer (Leiden: Brill, 2002).  Forspecific national settings, see (again, amongmanyother): Arie L. Molendijk, TheEmer- gence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands (Leiden: Martin Nijhoff/Brill, 2005); Philippe Borgeaud, “L’histoire des religions àGenève. Origines et métamorphoses,” Asdiwal. Revue gen- evoise d’anthropologie et d’histoiredes religions 1(2006): 13–22;Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay, The Science of Religion in Britain: 1860–1915 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,2010); Jean-Philippe Schreiber,ed., L’Écolebruxelloise d’étude des religions:150 ans d’approche libre- exaministe du fait religieux (Fernelmont: E.M.E., 2012); Mario Mazza and Natale Spineto, eds., La storiografia storico-religiosa italiana tralafine dell’800 elaseconda GuerraMondiale (Ales- sandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2014). 4 Introduction tingsthis would not be accomplished until well into the 20th century.¹¹ Most of the newlycreated positions werechairsin“History of religions” (cf. “Histoire des religions,”“Godsdienstgeschiedenis,”“Religionsgeschichte,”“Storia delle religioni,” etc.), which immediatelyreveals the keyobjectivesofthe young discipline: to break through the monopolyofthe Judeo-Christian tradition as apriv- ileged object of inquiry,and to develop ascientific, historical-critical and comparative perspective on religions of the past and the present.However,inspite of these shared objectives, there werefierce debates between rival schools about the methodological, religious,and ideological profile of the professional historian of religions. The main focus of this book is on Loisy’scontribution to this science laïque after 1908, and on his intellectual dialogue with the inherentlycomparative, but multifarious and often conflicting methodological currents in this young national and international discipline.¹² It is important,however,tonote that no sharp division maybedrawn between his comparative insights before and after 1908. When comparing his career as aCatholic and later as an independent scholar, we can observecertain discontinuities,but manyideas remain remark- ablyconsistent over the years. To corroborate this point,this book will begin with achapter on his Modernist writings,and the comparative methods used therein. The four remainingchapters focus entirelyonhis career at the CollègedeFrance. In reconstructing the development of Loisy’sviews, this book seeks to investigate what he compared, and how he compared. Wasthe scholarattentivetodifferen- ces,ordid he predominantlyadopt adiscourse of sameness?How did Loisy— who had been educated in the historicist-philological comparative tradition of Ernest Renan¹³—respond to the theoretical,meta-historical or even a-historical, comparative approachesdeveloped in the late 19th and early20th century fields of anthropology,sociology, and psychology? At the time when he assumedthe chair of history of religions, these methodsfueledanintense debate on whether history trulywas the best waytorecover what religion reallyand objectively is at

 In Germany, for instance, strong theological resistance against the new discipline prevented it from beinginstitutionalized until 1910 (Berlin). Forbibliographyonthe German situation and on the importantfactor of the reluctanceofAdolf vonHarnack, see chapter1(1.2).InCatholic Spain, the first chair in history of religions wasn’tcreated until 1954:see FranciscoDíez de Ve- lasco, “Ángel Álvarez de Miranda ylacátedradeHistoria de la Religiones de la Universidad de Madrid: un proyectotruncado,” Bandue. Revista de la Sociedad Española de Cienciasdelas Re- ligiones 1(2007): 83 – 133.  An excellent first introduction to the methodological conflicts of Loisy’stime is François Laplanche, “L’histoire des religions en Franceaudébut du XXesiècle,” MEFRIM 111 (1999): 623 – 634. Adetailed account of the methodological rivalries in the field follows in chapter 2(2.2).  On Loisy’sformative years,see the secondpart of this introduction. 0.1WhatThis Book Is About 5 anypoint in time. To what extent did Loisy open up to the insights of the then widelyinfluential Victorian anthropologists EdwardB.Tylor,James G. Frazer, William Robertson Smith, and their French spokesman, historian of religions and anthropologist Salomon Reinach?How did he respond to the seminal work of the French sociological schoolofÉmile Durkheim,and emerging psy- choanalytical approaches to religion?Towhat extent did he getinvolvedin these scholars’ obsession with the quest for the (one) origin of religion?Loisy was convincedthat comparison could give access to much needed, deeper generic knowledge on religion. Important parts of this book are concerned with investigatinghis general theory of religion, and how it shaped his detailed historical studies.¹⁴ To these questions, another,noless important one should immediatelybe added. This book also, and perhaps especially, aims at understanding whyit was such avital necessityfor Loisy to studycomparative religion, and whyhe made the methodological choices he made. This book follows the lead of leading intellectual historians like, for example, Hans Kippenberg,¹⁵ Ivan Strenski,¹⁶ and Kockuvon Stuckrad,¹⁷ who all madeaforceful plea for the profound historicization of the studyofreligion itself. These three scholars forcefullyargued that,instead of showing how very wrongour 19th and early20th century predecessors were, the much more interesting aim of the study of scholarship of religion is to try to determine by comparison with theircontemporaries what is reasonable to expect from them in their own historicalcontext.Inand through their recon- structionsofthe religious past,historians of religions—past and present—have always subtlyand less subtlyreflected on the role of religion in theirown time and life.¹⁸ Although this book is not primarilyanenquiry into Loisy’sper-

 As has been conclusively shown by Strenski’s Theologyand the FirstTheoryofSacrifice,and as will further become clear in this book, Loisy profoundlydislikedthe term “theory.” Instead, he preferred the term “philosophy” to refertohis general reflections on religion and its history. On these issues,see especiallychapters 4and 5.  Hans G. Kippenberg, Discovering Religious Historyinthe Modern Age,trans. BarbaraHarshav (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2002).  Ivan Strenski, Understanding Theories of Religion. An Introduction. Second Edition (Malden– Oxford: Blackwell, 2015). See also Strenski, Theologyand the FirstTheoryofSacrifice,15: “As a bonus,the historicizing of theories can be especiallyvaluable in helpingusavoid misdirected criticism.”  Kockuvon Stuckrad, TheScientification of Religion. An Historical Study of DiscursiveChange, 1800–2000 (Berlin–Boston: De Gruyter, 2014).  Apart from the awareness raised on this topic by Kippenberg, vonStuckrad, and Strenski, see also GuyStroumsa, ANew Science. TheDiscoveryofReligion in the AgeofReason (Cambridge 6 Introduction sonal religion or socio-political ideology, it will regularlyprovenecessary to in- vestigateboth his religious life and his broader worldviews in order to better ap- preciatehis comparative methods. In its attempt to give the fullest possible account of Loisy’scomparative religion, this book will not exclusively focus on his historical writings, but occasionallyalso offer analyses of key philosophical texts such as his wartime essay La Religion (1917). Another important corpus of docu- mentary evidence used in this study, consists of private writingsand correspond- ence. These largely unpublished documents often provide the most intimate insight into what Loisy reallymeant by what he wrote in his published work. The two files that are most important for our purposes, are the scientificcorrespond- ence between Loisy and the influential French scholarSalomon Reinach, and the one between Loisy and the Belgian historian of religions Franz Cumont.Aswe will see, the methodological profiles of Reinach and Cumont were substantially different (as weretheirpersonal relationships with Loisy), but they did share a profound interest in the comparative study of ancient religions.¹⁹ To provide the necessary contextualization of Loisy’sviews, we willalso studythe corre- spondence of relevant contemporaries, such as that between Reinach and Frazer. In addition, we will focus on the letters of powerful political personalities like the French statesmanÉmile Combes, and the Marquise Arconati-Visconti who held an influential political-academic salon in Paris, and fiercelysupported Loisy’scandidature at the Collège.²⁰ In this study, substantial attention will be devoted to the dialogues between both academic and non-academic, national and international networks in the studyofreligion, as well as to the dissocia- tions and boundaries between them. This last point bringsustothe second goal of this study. This book wants to be more than just astudyofLoisy’scomparative religion. Itssecond goal is broader in nature than the first,and applies to the history of the academic studyofreligion as ascientific discipline. Our studyofLoisy’sde- velopment as ahistorian of religions aims to advancenew insights on the professionalization of the non-confessional studyofreligion in the first two decades of the 20th century, and on the waythis budding discipline was embedded in re-

MA.–London: Harvard University Press, 2010), who focuses on the Enlightenment period, but starts with abroad theoretical introductionon“the studyofreligion as cultural criticism,” 1–13.  Reinach’spublished work and correspondencewith Loisy are at the coreofchapters 3and 4, Cumont’sisdiscussed in chapters 1and 4.  All references to these correspondencefiles,aswell as the necessary biographical background informationontheir authors,will be provided infra (chapter 1, 1.4, chapter3,3.2,chap- ter4,4.2.3,and passim). Foracomplete overview of all unpublishedsources used in this study, see the bibliographyatthe end of the book. 0.1WhatThis Book Is About 7 ligion, politics, and society.Our second chapter on Loisy’selectioncampaign at the Collège will reveal the role of powerful networks of academics and non-academic politicians who tried to gain control over the symbolic chair of history of religions in order to consolidatetheir hegemonyoverFrench society.Thispart of the book aims at uncovering these networks’ mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion, and at elucidating how these mechanisms wereinspired not onlyby socio-political ideologies and religious beliefs,but also by anti-Semitic or philo- Semiticsentimentstowardsrising starslikeMarcel Mauss. The relation between the discipline of history of religions and politics is also discussed in the third chapter,which includes an account of the polemicaldebatesabout the instruc- tion on religion in the strictlysecular French publicschools (the école laïque). As professor at the prestigious Collège,Loisy had an authoritative voice in these public debates.Bycontrast, the last chapter on Loisy’swartime writingswill in part pursue arather different goal, as it demonstrates the danger of excessive historicization. In particular, it will be argued thatthe Great Wardoes not provide all answers to the questions as to how and whyLoisy’sscientificviews de- velopedbetween 1915 and 1920. Concerningthe point of professionalization, the fourth chapter examines the largely unknown impact of dilettantescholars who flirted with the institutionalized academicstudyofreligion. The focus is on advocates of the Christ Myth theory which gained some popularity in late 19th and early20th centuryEurope, claiming thatJesus was never ahistorical person. The theory’sinfiltration in “re- spectable” scientificjournals, conferences,and institutions forced professional historians of religions to reflect on their own, often poorlydevelopedcompara- tive methods, and laid bare quite striking differencesbetween the disciplines of history of religions and history of Christianity,the latter of which was clearlynot considered as part of the former. Here, too, the focus will not exclusively be on Loisy:wewill also consider the work of scholars like Frazer,Reinach, Cumont, and Hermann Gunkel, who wereconfronted with the exactsame challenges. The chronologicalscope of this book covers the developmentofLoisy’sideas between roughly1900 and 1920,the main focus being on the period between 1909 and 1921.Thischoice requires some explanation because it does not encompass his entire career at the CollègedeFrance,which officiallyended in 1932, nor his later writingsdating from the period of 1932– 1939.Upon his appointment to the Collège,Loisy formulatedacomparative research program on the then top- ical subjectofsacrifice,atopic which he was planning to studyacross different periods and geographical areas.This comparative research—which, in fact,went far beyond the topic of sacrifice to also include contentious issues such as myth and magic—was completed during the First World War, probablysomewherebe- tween 1916 and 1917. In 1915–1916,Loisy had started to return to his old love. 8 Introduction

Simultaneouslytohis lastcourse at the CollègedeFrance on sacrifice,hebegan investigating the birth of Christianity,and devoted himself to the exegetical analysis of the Old and New Testament.Intheir polemical biography, AlbertHoutin and Félix Sartiaux wrotethatLoisy took strategic advantage of the wartime years to shift his attention from the general history of religions to his belovedstudyof earlyChristianityand Bible exegesis.²¹ Although their account is aproblematic sourceofinformation, Houtin and Sartiaux mayhavehad apoint here, because it is certainlytrue that he had completelyabandoned the general history of religions by the end of the war.Biblical exegesis, earlyChristianity, and ancient Ju- daism constituted the almost exclusive topics of inquiry for the remainingyears of his scientific career,which stopped onlyshortlybefore his death in 1940. These laterexegetical and historical writingswereinformed by his earlier comparative investigations, and Loisy continued to compareprimitive Christianityto surroundingreligious traditions, but he did so to amuchlesser degreethan before. This book is especially²² concerned with Loisy’sviews on the general history of religions. The chronologicalscope will thereforenot encompass the period after 1921.

0.2Prologue to the First Chapter: AVeryShortIntroduction to Loisy’sFormative Yearsand Early ComparativeStudies

Our book will begin with achapter about Loisy’scomparative methodsfrom the late 1890s and early1900s, focusingespeciallyonhis best-known Modernist essay, L’Évangile et l’Église (1902),and related privatewritingsof1897–1899. These particular textsprovide excellent insight into his earlycomparative para- digms,and their intricate relation to his philosophyofreligion and religious history.Theywere, however,not the first studies of Loisy to have acomparative out- look. In order not to start this book in medias res,the present prologuetothe first chapter will give abrief and schematic overview of Loisy’sformative years, his first publications on comparative religion, and the first problems he encountered with his ecclesiastical superiorsfrom the 1890s onwards. When Loisy first entered the Institut catholique in Paris as astudent in 1878, its theological faculty had onlyjustbeen founded. Afew years before, in 1875,

 Houtin and Sartiaux, Alfred Loisy,178 – 179.  Chapters 1and 3mainlyfocus on Loisy’scomparative studyofthe history of Christianity,but they,too,are especiallyinterested in the largely implicit theoretical and methodological conclu- sions that can be drawnfromdetailed historical writings such as Les Mystères païens et le mys- tèrechrétien (Paris:Nourry,1919). 0.2Prologue to the First Chapter 9 the regime of the new Third Republic had passed alaw by which it hoped to gain political support from hostileCatholics. Therelevant lawdecreed that Catholics could establish theirown institutions for higher education.²³ In his later auto- biographies, Choses passées (1913) and the Mémoires (1930 –1931), Loisy was critical of the education he had receivedatthe Institut. François Laplanche has con- vincingly shown thatCatholic higher education substantiallylaggedbehindin comparison to the critical methodsfor historicaland textual exegesis that werebeing developed in German biblical scholarship.²⁴ At the Institut catholique, onlyone exception stood out because of his acceptanceofhistorical-critical methodology, namelyLouis Duchesne.Although Loisy greatlydownplayedthis scholar’simportance in his later autobiographicalwritings, Duchesne was para- mounttohis earlyintellectual development.²⁵ Without anydoubt, it was this prominent historian of the earlyCatholic Church who first introduced him to historical criticism, and who mentored his earlyreadings of Germanexegesis. Shortlyafter his arrival at the Institut,Loisy fell seriously ill and was forced to leave Paris. In June 1879,hereceivedordination to the priesthood, and was chargedwith parochial ministry in two villages close to his place of birth in the rural Champagne region. Contact with Duchesne seemed to have continued almostuninterruptedlyduringLoisy’sabsencefrom Paris, and Duchesne certainly playedarole in his return to the Institut in May1881. Because of his critical teachings on earlyChristian history,Duchesne himself was forced to leave the Institut in 1883, after which he was appointed to the Fourth Section of Sciences historiques et philologiques of the École pratique (the Fifth of Sciencesreligieuses was not founded until 1886²⁶). When Loisy laterunsuccessfullyappliedfor the

 Forthe context of these events:Émile Poulat, “L’institutiondes ‘sciences religieuses’,” in Cent ans de sciences religieuses en France,ed. Jean Baubérot (Paris:Cerf, 1987), 60;Hill, ThePol- itics of Modernism,50–52;Laplanche, La Crise de l’origine,26. The rapidcreation of new Cath- olic schools and universities soon triggeredstrong anticlerical reactions,and as of 1880,new laws substantiallyenhanced statecontrol over these institutionsand formallyforbade them to carry the title of university.Onthis context: Hill, ThePolitics of Modernism,51.  Laplanche, La Crise de l’origine,22. ForLoisy’sown evaluation, see his Mémoires,I,72–74.  Loisy, Mémoires,I,105–107, and also 170where Loisy is immenselycritical of Duchesne’s historical work. On their complex relationship: Émile Poulat, 362–365; Goichot, Alfred Loisy et ses amis,17–22, and especiallyBrigitte Waché, “Lesrelations entreAlfredLoisy et Louis Duchesne,” Sociétéinternationale d’études sur Alfred Loisy,URL: http://alfred.loisy.free.fr/ pdf/loisyduchesne_wache.pdf. Brigitte Waché also authored afine intellectual biographyof Duchesne: Monseigneur Louis Duchesne (1843–1922): historien de l’Église, directeur de l’École française de Rome (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992).  See also infra,chapter2,which deals with the institutionalization of the French studyofreligion. 10 Introduction vacant chair of Assyriologyatthat samesection, he felt that Duchesne insuffi- cientlysupported his candidature, and their relations grew strained.²⁷ This was, however,not the onlyreason whyLoisy retroactively disassociatedhimself from Duchesne. The two scholars weredistinctly different in temperament,religious beliefs, and attitudes towards the Catholic Church, of which Duchesne re- mainedamember until his death in 1922, notwithstanding the manyproblems he experienced because of anti-Modernist hostilities towards his work.²⁸ For our purposes, it is important to mentionthat Duchesne was certainlywell-famil- iar with comparative research of the Old and New Testament, which was steadily gainingground in France, Germany,and elsewhereinEurope during the later decades of the 19th century.That he preferred not to touchupon these topics in his own publications, or onlyreluctantlyso, does not mean that he didn’tdiscuss them with Loisy during the manyprivateconversations they had.²⁹ If Loisy laterdeliberatelydownplayedhis indebtedness to Duchesne, he did entirelythe opposite for his intellectual relationship to France’s19th century giant in the historical and comparative studyofancient Judaism and earlyChris- tianity.³⁰ Profoundlydissatisfied over his education at the Institut catholique,he soon turned to self-study, and simultaneouslybegan to take courses at the leading secular institutions for higher education, in preparation of his doctoral the- sis. Starting from 1882–1883, we find Loisy at the Collège de France,following the lectures of Ernest Renan, and at the Fourth Section of the École pratique,taking courses in Assyriology and Egyptology.³¹ In his Mémoires,Loisy provided multiple pieces of evidence for the wayRenan’scourses had imbued him with an inherentlycomparative takeonancient Judaism and earlyChristianity. In

 Loisy, Mémoires,I,165.  Loisy’slater letters to Cumont reveal that Loisy closelyfollowed Duchesne’sdifficulties with the Curia. See the index in Lannoy,Bonnet,Praet, Moncher Mithra,II. Duchesne’sproblems mainlyrevolvedaroundhis magnum opus, Histoireancienne de l’Église,3vols. (1906–1910), of which the Italian translation was put on the Index in January 1912. On this topic see Lannoy, Bonnet,Praet, Moncher Mithra,II, 58.  Unfortunately, the correspondencebetween Duchesneand Loisy is incompletelypreserved. The lettersLoisy wrotetoDuchesne arelost,and onlyaselected few of DuchesnetoLoisy have been preserved. They werepublished by Bruno Neveu, “LettresdeMonseigneur Duchesne, directeur de l’École française de Rome, àAlfredLoisy (1896–1917) et àFriedrich vonHügel (1895–1920),” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Âge. Temps modernes 84 (1972): 283–307and 559–599.  See especiallyhis Mémoires,I,117,where Loisy explicitlyopposed Duchesne and Renan.  It is significant that Loisy didn’tfollow the courses of the Liberal-Protestant scholar Albert Réville, whowas the first holder of the chair of history of religions (founded in 1879). On Réville see infra,chapter2(2.2.3). 0.2Prologue to the FirstChapter 11 his diary of 1883(quotedinthe Mémoires), he explained how Renan substantially contributed to his growingawareness that the OT and NT wereincomprehen- sible without taking into account their religious environments.Inthe following extract from this diary,his musingsonRenan’sclasses took the form of aficti- tious (and quite humoristic) dialogue between himself and the personified Cath- olic Church. This maywellbethe earliest proof we have of his interest in comparing Christianity:

Jérusalem, Babylone et la Perse, Alexandrie t’ont fourni ton Credo ;tul’as accommodé avec la philosophie d’Aristote, et il en est résulté un monumentd’un effet assez grandiose, mais tu devrais reconnaîtreavecnous que l’édificeest bien froid, obscur,qu’il menaceruine en plusd’un endroit,ouplutôt qu’il est bâti sur le sable. Kant,unAllemand dont tu as sans douteentenduprononcer le nom, aruiné la métaphysique.Onaretrouvétacréation et ton délugesur les briques de Ninive.Les Juifs ont empruntéles anges et les démons àlaPerse ; ils t’ont fourni ainsi de quoi peupler tonciel (et tonenfer). Et ton ciel lui-même, ton Elysée et tonTartare, la Grèce te les atransmis afin que tu pusses remplacer avantageusement le shéol hébreu, où les morts étaient si près du néant qu’on ne sait s’ils yétaient heureux ou malheureux.³²

Whereas Kantian philosophyhad ruined metaphysics,Loisy argued, comparative religion now deprivedthe CatholicChurch from its claims to absolute unique- ness by showing its resemblance to the religions and philosophiesofother cultures such as Babylonia (where similar myths of creation and deluge had been found), Persia (which had borrowed its angels and demons to Judaism), Is- rael and Greece(which had profoundlyinfluenced its credo). While the resultof these assimilationshad once been grand and monumental, the Catholic Church had now become cold and obscure to many, accordingtoLoisy.Inshort,the Church stood on shaky grounds and was in dire need of reform. Both in his inaugural speech of 1909,and in his later autobiographical writings, Loisy framed himself as Renan’slegitimate successor at the Collège,which strictlyspeakinghewas not,because the chair of history of religions didn’texist in Renan’stime.³³ When writing these later texts,Loisy had alreadybeen excom- municatedfrom the Church, and had effectively been recuperated by the comparative science laïque,onwhich Renan had had an immense impact.Itmade per- fect sense, then, for the laterLoisy to trace his intellectual genealogytoRenan. However,atthe time when he was actuallyfollowing Renan’scourses,Loisy was in aquite different religious and intellectual state of mind. This is not to saythat

 Loisy, Mémoires,I,121–122.  Forananalysis of Loisy’sinaugural speech of 1909 and his strategic reasonsfor presenting himself as the direct heir of Renan, see infra,chapter 3(3.1). 12 Introduction

Renan was not importantfor his intellectual development (he most certainly was), but when reading Loisy’slater writings, one would almostforgetthat back in the 1880s, he had been very critical of Renan, with whom, it is instructive to point out,henever established anyform of personal contact.³⁴ On the one hand, he felt that Renan had been wrongtoconclude that Catholicism was the- oreticallyincompatible with modern science. On the other hand,hecriticized Renan’saltogetherlimited knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian languages, which was afurther incentive to set sail to the École pratique. Loisy’sintense training in the then vibrant French field of Assyriology is an important, yetoften overlooked part of his education. This lacuna has recently been filled by C.J.T. Talar,and especiallyJeffrey Morrow,who have shownthat Loisy took courses with leading figures such as Jules Oppert,Joseph Halévy, and Arthur Amiaud.³⁵ After his studies, he appliedfor the chair in Assyriology, left vacant by the untimely death of Amiaud (1849–1889). Unable to obtain that position, he taught courses in Assyriology at the Institut catholique,where he was appointed to the chair in Écriture sainte immediatelyafter obtaining his doctoral degree in theology. Loisy’svery first publications in comparative religion date back to the 1890s. Not unsurprisingly,they all concern the interrela- tion between the Old Testament,especiallythe Pentateuch, and ancient Babylo- nian religions.³⁶ Following the example of Renan, Loisy’scomparative approach is stronglyphilological and deeplyhistoricist.³⁷ His earlypublications show a method that is focused on rigid textual analysis,and reveal aprimary interest in the comparison of ancientmythology. As Jeffrey Morrow has shown, his comparative work on Genesis was not onlyinspired by the strong French tradition in Assyriology,but also by the seminal research of the Religionsgeschichtliche

 ForLoisy’scriticism of Renan, see especiallyLoisy, Mémoires,I,117;onthis testimony, Mor- row, Alfred Loisy &Modern Biblical Studies,59. Foragood accountofLoisy’srelationship to Renan, see also Jones, Independence and Exegesis,1–13.  Morrow, Alfred Loisy &Modern Biblical Studies,45–50,and C.J.T. Talar, “Between Science and Myth: AlfredLoisy on Genesis,” in Amsler,ed., Quelle place pour Alfred Loisy,27–42.  See, for instance, AlfredLoisy, Les Mythes chaldéens de la Création et du Déluge (Amiens: Rousseau–Leroy,1892),and Les Mythes babyloniens et les premiers chapitres de la Genèse (Paris:Picard, 1901), which is acompilation of articles earlier published in the Revue d’histoire et de littératurereligieuses. Forafull account of all of Loisy’searlypublicationsinAssyriology and OT studies:Morrow, Alfred Loisy &Modern Biblical Studies,64–72.  On Renan’scomparative methodology,see most recentlyPerrine Simon-Nahum, “Renan pas- seur:delasciencedes religions àl’histoire des religions,” in Laurens, ed., Ernest Renan. La science, la religion, la République,263 – 369; Robert D. Priest, TheGospel According to Renan. Reading,Writing,and Religion in Nineteenth-centuryFrance (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2015), 27–31, and passim. 0.2 Prologue to the FirstChapter 13

Schule at the theological faculty in Göttingen.³⁸ Earlyon, Loisy had started reading Hermann Gunkel’sinnovative work on the Old Testament,but he was also well acquainted with the writingsofother members like Wilhelm Bousset and Johannes Weiss. It would not be until 1902thatLoisy publishedhis first reviews of the Schule’sresearch on earlyChristianity.³⁹ His earliest publications of the 1890s exclusively focused on Judaism, which was definitelyaless risky field of inquiry for aCatholicscholar.Still, it did not help him to stayout of trouble with the anti-Modernist hierarchyofthe CatholicChurch of his time. In 1892, Loisy foundedhis ownjournal L’Enseignementbiblique to further disseminate the content of his courses in Scripture at the Institut,and published aseries of articles which clearlyrelativized the divine inspiration of the Bible.⁴⁰ At this point,his critical enquiries came to the attention of his local superiors and instigatedwhat Harvey Hill aptlycalled an “earlyround of the Modernist crisis.”⁴¹ Loisy’spublications put the pressing Questionbiblique highonthe Catholic agenda: to what extent,and how could the results of historical-critical research of the Bible be reconciled with the dogmatic teachingsofthe Church? Under the papacyofLeo XIII, the Church had reservedlysupported scholarlyin- itiativestomodernize the Catholic science of religion, for example by allowing the organization of the Congrès scientifiques internationaux des catholiques (1888–1900).⁴² But at the same time, it forcefullystressed the absolute superior- ity of theologyoverhistory and exegesis, and with the encyclical Aeterni Patris

 See infra,chapter 4(4.1.1) for the bibliographyonthe pioneeringachievements of the Reli- gionsgeschichtliche Schule.  Loisy for instancepublished apositive but nuanced review of Hermann Gunkel’s Zum reli- gionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments in the Revued’histoireetdelittératurere- ligieuses 9(1904): 573–574. On this work by Gunkel, see infra,chapter4(4.1.1).  See, e.g., “Histoire critique du textedel’Ancien Testament,” Enseignement biblique 1(1892): 1–76,77–156,157–236, 237–313.  Harvey Hill, “LeoXIII, Loisy,and the ‘Broad School’:anEarlyRound of the Modernist Cri- sis,” Catholic Historical Review 89 (2003): 39–59.  The first initiative for these three-yearlyconferencescame fromLoisy’srectoratthe Institut catholique,Mgr.Mauriced’Hulst.The first edition took placeinParis and was attended by 1118 Catholic scholars,amongwhomLoisy and Duchesne (Loisy, Mémoires,I,163). The last confer- encetookplaceinMunich in 1900,after which the initiative was discontinued due to the then increasinglyhostile scientific politics in the Church. On the conferences:Albert Houtin, La Question biblique chez les catholiques de France au XIXe siècle (Paris:AlphonsePicardet fils,1902),126–1930,and Francesco Beretta, “LesCongrèsscientifiques internationaux des catholiques (1888–1900) et la production d’orthodoxie dans l’espaceintellectuel catholique,” in Le Catholicisme en Congrès,eds.Claude Langlois and Christian Sorrel, 155–203. URL: https:// halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00453294/document. 14 Introduction

(1879) it had especiallyproposed arenewal of thomistic philosophyasthe an- swer to the call of modern science.⁴³ At the beginning of academic year 1892–1893, seminarians of Saint-Sulpice werenolonger permitted to attend Loisy’scourse in Scripture. One year later,in May1893, Loisy was dismissed from his chair in Écriture sainte,but wasstill al- lowed to give his classes in Hebrew and Assyriology.Some days before the prom- ulgation of the encyclical Providentissimus deus on November18, 1893, he was dismissed entirelyfrom the Institut catholique. In December thatsameyear,he was forced to stop the publication of his journal. The encyclical on biblical scholarship marked asignificant phase in the “earlyround of the Modernist crisis”: Providentissimusdeus was the first of along series of increasinglyrepressive texts by which the Church tried to call ahalt to critical Catholic scholarship. Leo XIIIencouraged Catholicscholars to investigate the Bible, but at the same time decreed that all exegetical and historical inquiries should tie in with tradi- tional theological premises.The following encyclical, Depuislejour,of1899,ad- dressed the French clergy,and formallyforbade historicalcriticism to be part of its education. This much sterner tone was further radicalized duringthe papacy of Pius X(1903–1914), under whom atrue witch-hunt of Modernist priestswas instigatedwhich paralyzed critical scholarship in the Catholic Church for years.⁴⁴ After his dismissal from the Institut,Loisy was transferred to the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, whereheworked as achaplain at aDominican girls’ school. Deprivedfrom decent libraries, he used these yearsofforced academic silence to work on an all-encompassingapology of aprofoundlymodern- ized CatholicChurch under which critical scholarship would flourish. The pri- vatemanuscript containing these views carriesthe double title of La Crise de la foi dans le temps présent: Essais d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses. Written between 1897–1899,itreveals Loisy’ssearch for aphilosophicalframework that could overcome the strong shortcomingshedetected in both thomistic essential- ism and in the dominant Liberal-Protestant definitions of (Christian) religion.

 ForLeo XIII’sposition on the Question biblique: Hill, “Leo XII, Loisy,and the ‘Broad School,” 50 –53.  On the organization of this witch-hunt :Émile Poulat, Intégrisme et catholicisme intégral: un réseau secret international antimoderniste: La “Sapinière” (1909–1921) (Paris–Tournai: Caster- man, 1969). In this study, Poulat investigates the so-called “Sodalitium Pianum,” which was a secret network of spies whoreported Modernist authors to Rome. It was founded in 1909 by Mgr. Umberto Benigni, member of Pius’sultraconservative entourage. 0.2 Prologue to the FirstChapter 15

First publishedinits entirety by François Laplanche in 2010,⁴⁵ the Neuillymanu- script is apivotal text for the reconstruction of Loisy’sintellectual development in the 1890s. It discloses his deeplyevolutionary philosophyofreligious history, which, as this book willshow,was never to disappear from his oeuvre. ForLoisy, alias the self-declared “Einstein of the history of religions,”⁴⁶ history shows how religious truth has always been in the making,inconstant flux. The Neuilly manuscript was the main sourcefrom which he drew his L’Évangile et Église. Before turning to the first chapter,one last crucial piece of background in- formationremains to be provided. While in Neuilly, Loisy conceivedofthe idea to createasuccessor to his deceased Enseignementbiblique. In 1896,the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses was born.⁴⁷ He wanted this new journal to further disseminate the resultsofthe scientific studyofreligion among both non-specialist and specialist Catholic audiences. The Revue was uncompro- misingly historicaland critical. Although Catholic hostility towards his scientific activities wasnow such that he could not direct the journal himself without in- curring new difficulties,his silent collaboration behind the scenes still brought Loisy into direct contact with the work of leading national and international scholars in the secular studyofreligion. Special attention should be drawnto the work of Reinach and Cumont,who bothcontributed to the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses. As the first chapter will now try to show,their work would soon begin to leave traces in Loisy’sown scientific output.

 Alfred Loisy, La Crise de la foi dans le temps présent (Essais d’histoireetdephilosophie religieuses),ed. François Laplanche (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), with introductions by Laplanche himself, Christophe Théobald,and RosannaChiappa.  Forthis self-designation, see Loisy’slater lettertoCumont quoted at the beginning of this studyand also analyzedinchapter5(5.3.2).  On the creation of the RHLR and the pivotal roleofFrench Latinist Paul Lejaywho anony- mouslydirected the journal, see Annelies Lannoy, “‘Envoyez-nous votretaurobole et que Bellone nous protège.’ Franz Cumont,PaulLejay and the Revue d’histoire et de littératurereligieuses,” Forum Romanum Belgicum 12 (2015): 1–19.