Alfred Loisy
French theologian (1857-1940)
Alfred Firmin Loisy (French: [lwazi]) (28 February 1857 – 1 June 1940) was a French Catholic priest, theologian, and academic, generally regarded as one of the leading figures of the modernist movement within the Catholic Church. He was a critic of traditional views on the interpretation of the Bible, and argued that the methods of modern biblical criticism could aid theology. He famously wrote that "Jesus announced the kingdom, and it is the Church that came".
Loisy's views brought him into conflict with the Catholic hierarchy, including Popes Leo XIII and Pius X. In 1893, he was dismissed from his position as professor of the Catholic University of Paris. Several of his works were placed in the Index of Forbidden Books, and in 1908 he was formally excommunicated. He was never reconciled with the Church, and from 1909 to 1932 he held the chair of history of religions at the Collège de France. He also taught at the École pratique des hautes études and at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Paris, and was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1932.
Education
Born on 28 February 1857 at Ambrières, Loisy was put into the ecclesiastical school of Saint-Dizier at four years old. He decided for the priesthood and was educated from 1874 to 1879 at the Grand séminaire de Châlons-en-Champagne; he entered the Institut Catholique de Paris in 1878/1879. Prior to his ordination to the subdiaconate, he had experienced doubts regarding the soundness of the Catholic faith.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alfred Loisy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.