Mignot, Eudoxe-Irénée

MIGNOT, EUDOXE-IRÉNÉE. - Archbishop, b. at Brancourt (Aisne) on 20 Sept. 1842, d. at Albi on 18 March 1918. Ordained priest in 1864, he became bishop of Fréjus in 1890, then archbishop of Albi in 1899.

In France he was one of the most active and effective advocates of bringing ecclesiastical studies up to date with the ideas of the times. In 1897 he published in the Correspondant: L'évolutionnisme religieux, in refutation of Sabatier in the work Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion, acknowledging that "what he lacked was to be a Christian."

In 1900 he addressed to his clergy of Albi a remarkable series of Lettres sur les études ecclésiastiques, which was followed on 13 Nov. 1901 by a discourse on La méthode de la théologie that had wide resonance. His specific culture had as its object biblical studies, and at the invitation of Vigouroux he had written the preface to the Dictionnaire de la Bible (1893) and to the Bible polyglotte (1899). The commonality of studies and of critical tendencies led him to patronize the literary activity of Alfred Loisy; so much so that it was said that he had been one of the two guardian angels watching over his career. The other was Baron Friedrich von Hügel, to whom M. was bound by friendship and by epistolary correspondence. Appreciating Loisy's culture, M. hoped to keep him on the right path and worked in the last years of Leo XIII to avert from him a condemnation that was already announcing itself, when in Nov. 1902 and in Oct. 1903 he published the two little combat volumes L'Evangile et l'Eglise and Autour d'un petit livre; together with von Hügel, M. still thought of Loisy as a Catholic and assured the Correspondant on 10 Jan. 1904 that Loisy would accept the judgment of ecclesiastical authority, and he worked with Pius X to prevent a rigorous judgment against him; for which he was targeted together with Fr. Lagrange by anti-modernist theologians (1903-1904). Once the condemnation of modernism came, M., with two consecutive studies: Lettres sur les études ecclésiastiques (Paris 1908) and L'Eglise et la critique (ibid. 1910), set out to show how that condemnation gave a new motive for devoting oneself to scientific study.

Silvio Furlani