LUCIUS, ERNST. - Protestant, scholar of hagiography, b. at Ernolsheim (Alsace) on 16 Oct. 1852, d. at Strasbourg on 28 Nov. 1902.
He studied at the Protestant gymnasium and at the Faculty of Theology in Strasbourg, where he graduated with a dissertation on the Therapeutae (*Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der Askese*, Strasbourg 1879), which aroused much controversy and criticism and gave notable impetus to Philonian studies. Vicar to his father, who was a Protestant pastor at Sesenheim, and entrusted with the administration of a parish in Strasbourg, in 1881 he published a study on the relationship between Essenism and Judaism (*Der Essensimus in seinem Verhältnis zum Judentum*).
Ordinary professor at the University of Strasbourg in 1889, he worked indefatigably on a work on the origins of the cult of the saints (*Die Anfänge des Heiligenkults in der christlichen Kirche*, published posthumously by G. Anrich, Tübingen 1904), a learned but critically flawed work in its general approach to the problem under study: the cult of the saints would be a deviation from the spirit of the Gospel and an inheritance from paganism, inasmuch as martyrs and saints would be the heirs of pagan heroes. This is historically untenable, as the Bollandist H. Delehaye has admirably demonstrated.