SABATIER, PAUL. - French Calvinist pastor, professor and historian, b. at Saint-Michel-de-Chabrillanoux (province of Ardèche) on 3 Aug. 1858, d. at Strasbourg on 4 March 1928.
After completing his literary courses at Besançon and Lille, he studied medicine at Montpellier. In 1880 he enrolled in the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Paris, where A. Sabatier (v.) taught, and attended Renan's lectures at the Collège de France. He went to Germany in 1884 and finished his theological studies in Paris in 1885 with a bachelor's thesis on the text of the Didaché, recently discovered. Vicar at St. Nicholas in Strasbourg from 1885 to 1889, then pastor at St. Cierge-la-Serre, in 1890 he began there to draft the biography of St. Francis, to which work, as he said, Renan had spurred him (Etudes inédites, Paris 1932, pp. 69-70). Of delicate health, he had to interrupt his ministry several times until in 1894 he left it. From that moment S. devoted himself entirely to his historical works, residing over the twenty years that followed in Italy and especially at Assisi.
In 1894 he published in Paris the Vie de st François, whose 46 successive editions down to the posthumous one of 1931, described in the subtitle as "recast and definitive," and numerous translations demonstrate its merits, owed to the art of the narrator, to a perfect knowledge of the sources and of the historical setting, and to the seductive manner of presenting the hero, of defining his personality and his mission of renewing the Church according to the "pure" Gospel. The work lets the biographer's liberal thought and his prejudices against Rome show through when he narrates the relations of Francis, legislator of his own Order, with the Curia, accused of having hindered the Saint's ideas and diverted the Franciscan movement from its original line; it was placed on the Index on 18 June 1894. Various theories concerning the origin and value of the sources have aroused discussions (v. QUESTIONE FRANCESCANA). S. always preferred the writings that he traced back to Brother Leo and the first companions: the Speculum perfectionis, which he dated to 1227, and the Legenda trium sociorum, held by him to be faithful witnesses of the deeds and spirit of the founder, which the official biographers, Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure, would have distorted. It is now admitted that the writings attributed to Brother Leo are late compilations.
S.'s contribution to Franciscan studies is outstanding: ancient texts were unearthed in the manuscript holdings of libraries, such as the Speculum perfectionis, the Tractatus de Indulgentia S. M. de Portiunculo of Brother Bartoli of Assisi, the Regula antiqua of the Franciscan Third Order, the Actus b. Francisci, etc., all precious documents that nourished the learned studies of the Collection d'études et de documents sur l'histoire religieuse et littéraire du moyen âge and the Opuscules de critique historique, founded respectively in 1898 and 1901. Under his impulse the "Società internazionale di studi francescani" was created at Assisi in 1902 and the "British Society of Franciscan Studies" in London in 1908. The theological formation derived from the liberal Protestantism of Auguste Sabatier and his familiarity with certain French, Italian and English ecclesiastical circles explain his active participation in the modernist movement, hailed by him as the "spiritual springtime" of the Catholic Church. He became its popularizer and support with word and pen (Les modernistes, Paris 1909) to such an extent that he was jokingly called the "pope of modernism." His optimism about the outcome of the crisis was not diminished by the Roman sanctions against the innovators and their doctrines (L'orientation religieuse de la France actuelle, ibid. 1912). With equal energy he supported the French laws of separation between Church and State, judged capable of regenerating the Church (A propos de la séparation des Eglises et de l'Etat, ibid. 1906). His Lettres d'un français à un italien (1914-15) created new fame for him: they legitimized French and Allied intervention while seeking to clarify the spiritual character of the world conflict. The English press (The Times, 22 Jan. 1915) and the Italian press (Giornale d'Italia and other dailies) contributed greatly to their diffusion. During the war years, S. resumed his ministry in his native village; in 1919 he was appointed professor of ecclesiastical history at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Strasbourg. He was buried in the cemetery of St-Michel-de-Chabrillanoux.
Bibliography3 works
Clemente Schmitt