LOISY, Alfred Firmin (1857–1940), French Modernist biblical scholar. A native of Ambrières (Marne), he came of farming stock. Educated at the diocesan seminary at Châlons-sur-Marne and at the Institut Catholique in Paris, he was ordained priest in 1879. After a short time as a country curé, he returned to Paris at the instigation of L. Duchesne, who inspired him with zeal for historico-critical study. It was to the critical study of the Bible that Loisy devoted himself, and in this sphere he came to feel the need for a radical renewal of conventional ecclesiastical teaching. Although by 1886 his own faith in traditional Catholicism had been severely strained he remained in the RC Church in the hope of modernizing its teaching.

     In 1890, when he was appointed Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Institut Catholique, he was already publishing the results of his critical studies, which were arousing both enthusiasm and suspicion. In 1893 he was dismissed from his professorship and urged to confine himself to oriental languages. From this time he received encouragement from his friends E. I. Mignot (1842–1918), Archbishop of Albi, and F. von Hügel. From 1894 to 1896 he was chaplain to the Dominican nuns and their school at Neuilly; here he had ample time to work out a new apologetic for Catholicism. From 1900 he taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études.

     In 1902 Loisy published L’Évangile et l’Église; it took the form of a reply to A. Harnack’s Wesen des Christentums (1900), but it was in effect a sensationally novel defence of Catholicism. As against Harnack, who sought to base Christianity on the teaching of the historic Jesus apart from later dogmatic accretions, Loisy maintained that its essence was to be sought in the faith of the developed Church as expanded under the guidance of the Spirit. The fact that Christ did not found a Church or institute Sacraments did not detract from their central place in the Christian life [!!]. The book was welcomed in some quarters, but also violently attacked. It was condemned by the Archbishop of Paris and by a few other French bishops, but the Papacy refrained from intervening. When, however, in the following year Loisy published not only Autour d’un petit livre, which dealt with the controversy that had arisen, but also Le Quatrième Évangile, Pope Pius X, who had just succeeded Leo XIII, placed both these books and other works of his on the Index. In 1904 Loisy reluctantly made a formal act of submission, resigned his lectureship at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and retired to the country. In 1906 he abandoned his priestly functions. A final breach with the Church came after the Papal acts of 1907 which condemned Modernism. Loisy published Simples Réflexions sur le décret du Saint-Office Lamentabili sane Exitu et sur l’encyclique Pascendi Dominici gregis (1908), as well as his great work Les Évangiles synoptiques (2 vols., 1907–8). On 7 Mar. 1908 he was excommunicated.

     From 1909 to 1930 Loisy was professor of the history of religions at the Collège de France. He was a prolific writer and during this period he published major works on Christian origins and on the comparative history of religions, such as Les Actes des Apôtres (1920) and Essai historique sur le sacrifice (1920), and smaller books in which he foreshadowed his own religious and moral philosophy, notably La Religion (1917; 2nd edn., 1924). In his autobiographical writings, Choses passées (1913) and Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire religieuse de notre temps (3 vols., 1930–1), he sought to justify his part in the Modernist movement and to interpret its history.

     After his break with the Church, his work as a biblical critic, despite the brilliance of style and learning which characterized it, was generally regarded as erratic and recklessly conjectural. His final views on the NT are summed up in La Naissance du christianisme (1933), in which he treated the Gospels not as historical documents but as catechetical and cultural literature with but slight historical basis. The works of his last years, however, attacked the proponents of the Christmyth theories and appear more in line with his earlier Christian faith. Since 1968 many volumes of his private papers have been accessible in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. They emphasize that he was a mystic, with a pastoral sense, as well as a savant, and reveal the complexity of his character as well as the range of his interests and friendships.

R. Marlé, SJ, Au cœur de la crise moderniste: Le dossier inédit d’une controverse. Lettres de Maurice Blondel, H. Bremond, Fr. von Hügel, Alfred Loisy, Fernand Mourret, J. Wehrlé (1960). Contemporary accounts by [H. Bremond], Un Clerc qui n’a pas trahi, pub. under the pseudonym Sylvain Leblanc (1931); M. J. Lag-range, OP, M. Loisy et le modernisme (1932); and A. Houtin (d. 1926) and F. Sartiaux (d. 1944), Alfred Loisy: Sa Vie, son œuvre, ed. E. Poulat (1960). M. D. Petre, Alfred Loisy: His Religious Significance; (1944); F. Heiler, Der Vater der katholischen Modernismus, Alfred Loisy (Munich, 1947); R. de Boyer de Sainte Suzanne, Alfred Loisy entre la foi et l’incroyance [1968], with some unpub. letters; M. Guasco, Alfred Loisy in Italia (Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto di Scienze Politiche dell’Università di Torino, 33; 1975), also with unpub. letters. F. Turvasi, The Condemnation of Alfred Loisy and the Historical Method (Uomini e Dottrine, 24; 1979). A. R. Vidler, The Modernist Movement in the Roman Catholic Church (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 67–139; id., A Variety of Catholic Modernists (ibid., 1970), esp. pp. 20–56. J. Ratté, Three Modernists (1968), pp. 43–141, with bibl. pp. 353 f. A. H. Jones, Independence and Exegesis: The Study of Early Christianity in the Work of Alfred Loisy … Charles Guignebert … and Maurice Goguel … (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Biblischen Exegese, 26; 1983), pp. 60–127. H. Hill, The Politics of Modernism: Alfred Loisy and the Scientific Study of Religion (Washington, DC [2002]). See also other works cited s.v. MODERNISM.

Bremond H. Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’à nos jours (11 vols., 1916–33, + index, 1936).

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