LA TAILLE, MAURICE de. – Jesuit theologian, born at Semblancay (Indre-et-Loire) on 30 November 1872, died in Paris on 23 October 1933. He entered religious life at Canterbury (1890), studied philosophy at Jersey and theology at Paris and Lyons. In 1901 he was ordained a priest at Tours. A disciple of Frs. Bainvel, De Grandmaison, Harent, and Le Bachelet, he immediately turned to theological studies. Professor of dogmatic theology at the Catholic Faculty of Angers (1905–16),
in 1919 he was called to the Gregorian University, where his gifts as a brilliant and exceptionally talented expositor were widely appreciated.
A theologian of keen intellect and broad culture, from 1904 onward he began the series of his numerous articles, published in the principal journals, especially in the Etudes, in which he attacked modernism vigorously. At the same time he developed the masterly Eucharistic work that made him famous, Mysterium fidei (Paris 1921; 3rd ed. there 1933). From a rapid encounter with the Letter to the Hebrews, the broad outline of the vast synthesis on the sacrifice of Christ and of the Church took shape in the mind of L. T.; over a decade of intense work, he documented it with extraordinary erudition. Written in elegant Latin (at times overly polished), constructed according to an inner logic to which the author subjected a rich variety of texts, its pages filled with suggestive insights and traversed by a current of deeply felt mysticism, the ample volume (1300 pp.) commanded the admiration of many and the attention of all (for the content of the work, V. MESSA). It should be noted that the remainder of his all too brief existence (his health was extremely delicate, frequently preventing him from completing courses begun with great enthusiasm) was devoted to defending and clarifying his sacrificial ideas (which were strongly attacked from several quarters) in learned articles in the Gregorianum, the Ephemerides theologicae Locanienses, and elsewhere. He popularized the central idea of Mysterium Fidei in the scintillating pages of the Esquisse du mystère de la Foi, suivie de quelques éclaircissements (Paris 1924) and in a substantial exposition in M. Brillant, Eucharistia, Encyclopédie populaire sur l'Eucharistie (Paris 1934, pp. 151–206). The ingenious and original article Activation créée par acte incréé (in Recherches de science religieuses, 18 [1928], pp. 253–68) has led to the supposition that L. T. was preparing another major work on Grace, which would have borne the title Mysterium Caritatis. Since the Second Vatican Council, perhaps no work has so profoundly influenced the development of Eucharistic theology as Mysterium Fidei.