Abstract
Annelies Lannoy’s volume represents an important contribution to the study of Roman Catholic Modernism, the history of religions, and of Alfred Loisy’s role in both in particular. Her introduction serves as more than a mere summation of the book, but really situates Loisy in the context of Modernism, and it situates his work in the history of religions in light of his earlier studies and publications in Assyriology and biblical studies. In her first chapter L. shows how Loisy’s early Modernist work, L’Évangile et l’Église, functioned as an early attempt at history of religions in light of his prior comparative work, for example, in Assyriology, which is much neglected by most scholars. My only critique here, one of the few of the entire volume, is that she perhaps overemphasizes Newman’s influence on Loisy’s views of development (59). It is clear in light of Loisy’s previously unpublished essay, “La crise de la foi dans le temps présent: Essais d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses,” that he already had his developmental view firmly in place before Baron Friedrich von Hügel introduced him to Newman’s works.
Among L.’s most significant contributions is her second chapter, in which she uncovers the broader social and political context to the creation and history of the prestigious Chair of the History of Religions at the Collège de France, to which Loisy was elected in 1909 after his 1908 excommunication. It is here that we find a discussion of the essential role, neglected by scholars, of the Marquise Arconati-Visconti and her intellectual circle. L.’s work here has been guided by her meticulous study of so much of Loisy’s unpublished correspondence. L.’s work on Loisy’s correspondence, her co-edited massive (over one thousand pages) two-volume “Mon cher Mithra. . .” Le correspondence entre F. Cumont et A. Loisy, has landed her on the map as a first-rate scholar. Scholars have too often failed to realize the influence especially of women intellectuals such as Arconati, who herself privately funded university scholarships, a whole host of university chairs and research at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France, and at the École pratique des hautes études; and financially supported library holdings, collections at museums, and academic journals.
In her third chapter L. tackles the important matter of Loisy’s understanding of the relationship between science and religion, showing how Loisy understood both to be important but separate. The fourth chapter looks at Loisy’s contributions to the theory of myth. It is the fifth chapter on sacrifice, however, that really lies at the heart of L.’s work on Loisy. Loisy engaged the important work of history of religions scholars such as W. R. Smith and É. Durkheim. Scholars have remained uncertain as to Loisy’s relationship with the Durkheimians since, on the one hand, Loisy seemed so clearly in agreement with them regarding the social nature of religion, and yet, on the other hand, he openly criticized them. With characteristic lucidity L. clarifies that “Loisy agreed with the Durkheimians on the social function of religion, but he disagreed with their entirely functionalist definition of religion, which he found reductionist” (285).
Most interestingly, L. points out how Loisy saw love and sacrifice connected in a way that gave him hope for the future of humanity, in a humanistic vision clearly influenced by Loisy’s Catholicism: “this future fully depended on mankind’s commitment to true love, and this true love is for Loisy the equivalent of the willingness to self-sacrifice . . . Loisy explained that the purely moral ideal of altruism and ‘the gift of the self’ (‘don de soi’) has developed out of ritual sacrifice” (293).
L.’s book represents a groundbreaking study on Loisy, one of the most important figures in the Modernist controversy, who himself contributed much to the discipline of the history of religions in twentieth-century France. L. includes an incredible breadth of material in her study, each aspect of which she treats as a masterful scholar at home with the primary sources, many of which remain unpublished in archives. If her book might be faulted for not treating the broader development of the history of religions on a global level, it should be clear that such is beyond the scope of her study. Instead, she is focusing on Loisy’s prolific work in the history of religions in the France of the first half of the twentieth century, a topic which has received too little attention by scholars of Modernism and of Loisy. Her work thus fills an important lacuna and will be of interest to any scholar of the history of religions, Modernism, or Loisy.