LOISY, ALFRED. - Modernist exegete, b. at Ambières (Haute-Marne) on 28 Feb. 1857, d. in Paris on 6 June 1940. In 1874 L. entered the major seminary of Châlons. Ordained priest on 29 June 1879, he exercised the ministry for a time until he went to Paris in 1881, especially through the interest of Mgr. L. Duchesne. He attended the Institute, where he later took up the chair of Hebrew. According to his Mémoires (v. below, I, p. 154), L. began to feel estranged from the Church in 1886. His writings soon aroused serious suspicions regarding his orthodoxy. In 1893 L. gave up the course in exegesis to limit himself to teaching Hebrew. In 1894 he went to Neuilly, leaving the Institute, and in 1899 he was assimilated by J. Thureau-Dangin. From 1909, 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 Dec. 1903 together with Études évangéliques (ibid. 1902), Le quatrième évangile (ibid. 1903), Autour d’un petit livre (ibid. 1903) and La religion d’Israël (ibid. 1901).
L., who possessed indisputable historical-philological learning, in his numerous writings reveals himself as the most typical representative of modernism (v. biblical). 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 Holy Scripture the most extreme theories of German rationalism. In treating the New Testament, his preferred subject, he adopted a thoroughly destructive attitude in the criticism of sources so as to present the Church as a conscious distortion of the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus in a purely eschatological sense.
Among L.’s works, all of which were condemned (decree of 1 June 1932 and subsequent ones up to that of 20 July 1938), besides those already mentioned, the following deserve mention: Histoire du Canon de l’Ancien Testament (Paris 1890); Histoire du Canon du Nouveau Testament (ibid. 1891); Histoire critique du texte et des versions de l’Ancien Testament (2 vols., Amiens 1892-93); Les mythes babyloniens et les premiers chapitres de la Genèse (Paris 1901); Les Évangiles synoptiques (2 vols., Cefonds 1907-1908); Simples réflexions sur le décret du St-Office «Lamentabili sans exigu» et sur l’encycl. «Pascendi dominici gregis» (ibid. 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 (ibid. 1911); L’Évangile selon Marc (ibid. 1912); Choses passées (ibid. 1913); L’Épître aux Galates (ibid. 1916); L’Évangile selon Luc (ibid. 1917); Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien (ibid. 1919); Essai historique sur le sacrifice (ibid. 1920); Les Actes des Apôtres (ibid. 1920); L’Apocalypse de Jean (ibid. 1923); La religion (ibid. 1924); Religion et humanité (ibid. 1926); Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire religieuse de notre temps (3 vols., ibid. 1930-31); Les origines du Nouveau Testament (ibid. 1936).