Lannoy - Alfred Loisy and the Making of History of Religions: A Study of the Development of Comparative Religion in the Early 20th Century

Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten

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ISBN 9783110583779

e-ISBN (PDF) 9783110584356

e-ISBN (EPUB) 9783110584134

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

[E]n 1893, jai t chass de lInstitut catholique pour avoir dit que la vrit

des critures tait relative. Jai t, sans le savoir, lEinstein de lhistoire

des religions. Il faut que je continue.

Letter of Alfred Loisy to Franz Cumont, January 17, 1922.

It is with pleasure that I here express my appreciation to those persons and institutions that have been crucial to the research for and writing of this book. This book is the synthesis of the research I carried out at Ghent University during my first and part of my second postdoctoral fellowship. To a lesser extent, it draws on research I conducted as part of my PhD thesis. My thanks go to the Research FoundationFlanders for generously funding these postdoctoral fellowships and the doctoral research project G. 0126.08.

I could not have written this book without the support and continued encouragement of Danny Praet, who has been a generous mentor for over 10 years now, and who first broached the idea for this study. I thank him for having introduced me to the workand humorof Alfred Loisy, while making personal efforts to keep me far away from Loisys way of life. I am profoundly grateful for his many insightful comments and invaluable guidance during all stages of writing. Over the past years, his critical historical thinking has been a source of inspiration and model for my own research and teaching. In addition, special thanks are due to C.J.T. Talar, who has also read the entire manuscript in various forms, provided many critical suggestions, and corrected grammatical errors. I am appreciative of the support he has been providing me since my early years as a PhD student, and I wish to thank him for having given me the opportunity to present my research during the sessions of the Alfred Loisy Unit at the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion in San Francisco (2011), Baltimore (2013), Boston (2017), and San Diego (2019). I am also profoundly grateful to Corinne Bonnet, who has been a relentless source of motivation since I first met her in 2008, and who has offered invaluable professional and personal support. Her work, and the many stimulating conversations we had about our distant predecessors have been instrumental in helping to shape the ideas presented in this book. Thanks to her, I was able to spend an inspiring time at the University of ToulouseJean Jaurs in MarchApril 2018. I am thankful for the warm welcome she offered me, and for the enthusiastic interest of her colleagues from the LabEx Structuration des Mondes Sociaux.

I discussed versions of what have become chapters at several conferences and meetings with colleagues. I especially wish to thank the President of the Socit Internationale dtudes sur Alfred Loisy, Frdric Amsler, the Honorary President of the Socit Pierre-Eugne Leroy, and members Jean-Michel Roessli and Francesca Prescendi, for their interest in my research. I extend my thanks to my American colleagues, Jeffrey Morrow, David Schultenover, and William Portier, for their comments during the aforementioned AAR meetings. Others who deserve special mention for their interest and support over the past years are Christoph Auffarth, Suzanne Marchand, Andr Motte, Jan Nelis, Jrg Rpke, Sigrid Sterckx, and Jan Verplaetse.

I would like to thank the series editors Jrg Rpke and Christoph Uehlinger of the RGVV for giving me the chance to contribute to the series and for believing in this project. I also wish to thank the editorial staff at De Gruyter, especially Aaron Sanborn-Overby, for the kind support, patience, and helpful advice.

This book draws substantially upon research I conducted at multiple archives and libraries. My thanks go to the staff of the Ghent University Libraries, the Manuscript Department of the Bibliothque nationale de France in Paris, the archives of the Gaasbeek Castle, the Bibliothque dhistoire des religions of the Sorbonne, the Victor Cousin Library of the Sorbonne, the Mjanes Library in Aix-en-Provence, and the library of the Academica Belgica in Rome.

I owe much to my colleagues from the Philosophy Department and the Department of Greek Literature at Ghent University, who offered moral support, friendship, and a great deal of fun. Turning to my family and friends, I am deeply indebted to my mother, my brother, my parents-in-law, and Lieven, Manu, and Aagje, who offered all kinds of help. Lastly, and most importantly, I thank my husband Bavo, who has read and commented extensively on the entire manuscript, and whose love, intelligence, creativity, and great faith in my abilities have kept me going.

I dedicate this book to my parents, Marie-Rose and Paul, with gratitude and admiration.

This book makes extensive use of unpublished manuscripts and correspondence (see the bibliography at the end of this book for all references). The transcriptions of the quoted extracts strictly follow the original spelling, punctuation, and word and line spacing of the manuscripts.

When original French, German or Italian publications by Loisy and his contemporaries were available in English translations, I referred to and quoted these English sources. If not, I quoted the texts in their original language and paraphrased the content in English; for some particularly dense passages from Loisys work I included a personal translation in an accompanying footnote (indicated as: my translation).

The following abbreviations are frequently used throughout this book:

Collge de France

Comptes rendus des sances de lAcadmie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres

Loisy, Alfred. Lvangile et lglise. Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1902

cole Pratique des Hautes tudes

Loisy, Alfred. Essai historique sur le sacrifice. Paris: mile Nourry, 1920

Mlanges de lcole franaise de RomeItalie et Mditerrane

Loisy, Alfred. Les Mystres paens et le mystre chrtien. Paris: mile Nourry, 1919

Revue dhistoire et de littrature religieuses

Revue de lhistoire des religions

This book has a double goal. The first is to study a largely neglected part of the scientific oeuvre of Alfred Loisy (18571940); the second is to use this scholars work as a window into the development and the dynamics of history of religions as a scientific discipline during the first two decades of the 20th century. Best known as the Father of Roman Catholic Modernism, this French priest and scholar of ancient Judaism and early Christianity was one of the protagonists of the Modernist crisis in the Church in the first decade of the 20th century. Loisy famously developed an intellectual reform program for a profound modernization 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 endeavor was forcefully rejected by the Church and led to his excommunication in 1908, when he was labelled