LOISY, ALFRED. — Modernist exegete, born at Ambrières (Haute-Marne) on 28 February 1857, died in Paris on 6 June 1940. In 1874 L. entered the major seminary of Châlons. Ordained a priest on
29 June 1879, he exercised the ministry for some time until he went to Paris in 1881, especially through the good offices of Msgr. L. Duchesne. He attended the Institute, where he soon took up the chair of Hebrew. According to his Mémoires (v. below, I, p. 154), in 1886 L. began to feel estranged from the Church. His writings soon aroused serious suspicions concerning his orthodoxy. In 1893 L. ceased teaching exegesis, limiting himself to the teaching of Hebrew. In 1894 he went to Neuilly, leaving the Institute, and in 1899 to the Assyriologist J. Thureau-Dangin. From 1909, by then already excommunicated, he went on to teach at the Collège de France. The book that placed him in open opposition to the Church was L'Évangile et l'Église (Paris 1903), condemned by the Holy Office on 16 December 1903 together with Études évangéliques (there 1902), Le quatrième évangile (there 1903), Autour d'un petit livre (there 1903), and La religion d'Israël (there 1901).
L., who possessed an indisputable historical-philological culture, reveals himself in his many writings as the modernism (v.). Not a few propositions of the decree Lamentabili (3 July 1907) are drawn from his books. Having denied the concept of inspiration and of the supernatural in general, L. applied to Sacred Scripture the most advanced theories of German rationalism. In dealing with the New Testament, his preferred subject, he adopted an extremely destructive attitude in his criticism of the sources, in order to present the Church as a conscious distortion of the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus in a merely eschatological sense.
Among L.’s works, all condemned (decree of 1 June 1932 and subsequent ones up to that of 20 July 1938), besides those already mentioned, the following should be recalled: Histoire du Canon de l'Ancien Testament (Paris 1890); Histoire du Canon du Nouveau Testament (there 1891); Histoire critique du texte et des versions de l'Ancien Testament (2 vols., Amiens 1892-93); Les mythes babylonies et les premiers chapitres de la Genèse (Paris 1901); Les Évangiles synoptiques (2 vols., Ceffonds 1907-1908); Simples réflexions sur le décret du St-Office « Lamentabili sane exitu » et sur l'encycl. « Pascendi dominici gregis » (there 1908); Quelques lettres sur des questions actuelles et sur des événements récents (Haute-Marne 1908); Jésus et la tradition évangélique (Paris 1910); A propos d'histoire des religions (there 1911); L'Évangile selon Marc (there 1912); Choses passées (there 1913); L'Épître aux Galates (there 1916); L'Évangile selon Luc (there 1917); Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien (there 1919); Essai historique sur le sacrifice (there 1920); Les Actes des Apôtres (there 1920); L'Apocalypse de Jean (there 1923); La religion (there 1924); Religion et humanité (there 1926); Mémoires pour servir d'histoire religieuse de notre temps (3 vols., there 1930-31); Les origines du Nouveau Testament (there 1936).