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 grammar school 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 a notable impetus to Philonic studies. Acting as assistant to his father, who was Protestant pastor at Sesenheim, and subsequently entrusted with the administration of a parish in Strasbourg, he published in 1881 a study on the relationship between Essenism and Judaism (Der Essenismus in seinem Verhältnis zum Judentum). Appointed full professor at the University of Strasbourg in 1889, he worked tirelessly on a study of the origin of the cult of the saints (Die Anfänge des Heiligenkults in der christlichen Kirche, published posthumously by G. Anrich, Tübingen 1904), an erudite work but critically mistaken in its general approach to the problem there examined: the cult of the saints was allegedly a deviation from the spirit of the Gospel and a legacy of paganism, insofar as martyrs and saints were said to be the heirs of pagan heroes. This is historically untenable, as the Bollandist H. Delehaye has admirably demonstrated.