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 re- sults 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 al- most without interruption since the 1960s, when Émile Poulat initiated the mod- ern 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 mod- erniste (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 compa- rative 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 au- tobiographical 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 institu- tional 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 fac- ulties of theology or in the faculties of letters and/or history,orevenwhether the academic “sci- ences 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 nation- al 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.,