Batiffol, Pierre

BATIFFOL, PIERRE. - French prelate, b. at Toulouse on 27 Jan. 1861, d. at Paris on 13 Jan. 1929; a pupil of St. Sulpice, priest in 1884. He attended the Institut catholique of Paris and the "École pratique des Hautes-Études", where he was a disciple of L. Duchesne from 1882 to 1884. In 1885 he was sent on an official mission to Albania to study there the famous Codex purpureus of Berat. From 1887 to 1889 he stayed in Rome as chaplain at St. Louis of the French, and there he worked under the direction of G. B. De Rossi. Already from 1887 he began to collaborate with various scholarly journals. But it was during the years 1889-98, when he held in Paris the post of chaplain of the Sainte-Barbe school, that he began to publish studies and works concerning patristics, biblical science and the history of the liturgy. The most important of this period are, besides the Studia patristica (Paris 1889-1900), his doctoral theses L'abbaye de Rossano and Quaestiones Philostorgianae (both there 1891); L'Histoire du bréviaire romain (there 1893); La Littérature grecque chrétienne (there 1897); and Six leçons sur les Evangiles (there 1897). In 1895 he founded the Bibliothèque de l'enseignement de l'histoire ecclésiastique, which still continues today.

From 1898 to 1908 he was rector of the Institut catholique of Toulouse. Under his impulse, the studies of positive theology there enjoyed a remarkable flourishing. Without completely neglecting his earlier studies, — in 1900 he still published in Paris the Tractatus Origenis, later restored to Gregory of Elvira, — he subsequently devoted his best works to the history of dogmas. In 1899 he founded the Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, and in 1905 he began the collection Etudes d'histoire des dogmes et d'ancienne littérature ecclésiastique (5 vols., from 1905 to 1914). As the fruit of his teaching, he published a work of method Questions d'enseignement supérieur ecclésiastique (Paris 1905) and two volumes of Etudes d'histoire et de théologie positive, the first devoted especially to Penance (there 1902), the second entirely to the Eucharist (there 1905). Appearing in the full crisis of modernism, these publications were the object of lively criticisms: the second was placed on the Index by the decree of 26 July 1907. Although B. had been one of the first to denounce the errors of A. Loisy and had fought him in numerous articles and especially in his book L'Enseignement de Jésus (there 1905), he nevertheless had to resign his office of rector in 1908. Having then retired to Paris, he took up again there his post of chaplain at the Sainte-Barbe school, which he held until his death.

It is during this period of forced retirement (1908-29) that the series of his most important and most enduring works unfolds, devoted especially to the history of the origins of the Church. In 1909, he brought to light L'Eglise naissante et le Catholicisme (Paris), which remains his masterpiece and which, with La paix constantinienne (there 1914), Le catholicisme de s. Augustin (there 1920) and Le Siège apostolique (there 1924), forms his capital work: Le Catholicisme des origines à s. Léon le Grand. Meanwhile, he published his lecture on Orpheus et l'Evangile (there 1910) and his commentary on the Odes de Salomon (there 1911), founded, in collaboration with p. de Labriolle, the Bulletin d'ancienne littérature et d'archéologie chrétiennes (1911-14), completely recast his history of the Roman breviary (there 1911) as well as his work condemned in 1907, on the Eucharist (5th ed., there 1913). After the First World War, he published the Leçons sur la Messe (there 1919) and Etudes de liturgie et d'archéologie chrétiennes (there 1919), followed soon after by the Survivances du culte impérial (there 1920). His participation in the conferences of Malines offered him the occasion to publish an apologetic study: Catholicisme et papauté, difficulté anglicanes et russes (there 1925). The fine biography of St. Gregory (there 1928) closes the series of his great works. In a posthumous volume entitled: Cathedra Petri. Etudes d'histoire ancienne de l'Eglise (Unam Sanctam, 4 [there 1938], some articles (published and unpublished) of B. have been collected which supplement the 4 volumes on Catholicism from the origins to St. Leo the Great.

A very prolific writer, B. collaborated with many journals and took part in works of national history, in congresses of liturgy and of religious ethnology. It is nevertheless his studies on the origins of the Church and the history of the Holy See that assure him an eminent place in Catholic scholarship of the 20th century.

Damiano Van den Eynde