TURMEL, Joseph. - Modernist theologian, born at Rennes on 13 Dec. 1859, died there on 5 Feb. 1943.
He was ordained priest on 3 June 1882 and appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the Seminary of Rennes; in 1884 he began the crisis that was to lead him away from the Catholic faith. Deprived of his chair in 1892, he served as chaplain to the Petites Soeurs of Rennes and continued his scholarly activity, regularly contributing the chronicle of church history to the Revue du clergé français and collaborating with patristic studies and notes in numerous French and foreign journals. Indeed, he was entrusted with the first volume of the Bibliothèque de théologie historique of the Catholic Institute of Paris; thus appeared alongside Prat’s Théologie de St Paul and d’Alès’s Théologie de Tertullien, Turmel’s Histoire de la théologie positive (2 vols., Paris 1904-1906). Criticism from reviewers and theologians was not long in coming, preparing the way for the condemnation of his works by the Index (7 March 1910 and 2 Jan. 1911). Other works had also been criticised, but they did not yet compromise his orthodoxy. Turmel, following a tactic systematically adopted by modernists, preferred to express his opinions in articles signed with pseudonyms (up to 14); thus in 1906 he wrote in the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses (signed A. Dupin) on the development of the dogma of the Trinity, emptying the argument of tradition. The following year, in the same journal, an article appeared under the signature G. Herzog denying tradition regarding the virginity of Mary. Turmel, in reviewing it, acknowledged its destructive character but refrained from refuting it on the pretext that this required a specialist.
On 20 March 1908, in the Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, an article by L. Salet appeared demonstrating a close affinity of style and thought between Herzog and Turmel’s Histoire, concluding that the former had plagiarised from the latter’s manuscripts. The entire French Catholic press was alarmed by the suspicion cast upon Turmel’s orthodoxy. Proceeding by the same method, Salet reached the same conclusions regarding the article by A. Dupin, but Turmel responded with haughty silence, which discouraged his defenders and strengthened the suspicions of his adversaries. Pressed by the archbishop of Rennes, Turmel declared that he did not know either Herzog or Dupin, subscribed to a general formula of adherence to and the integral right of the Church. The controversy was, for the time being, closed by Turmel’s obstinate silence and the lack of direct and irrefutable proof. Soon after followed the condemnation of Turmel’s works (5 July 1909; 7 March 1910), after which he disappeared from the theological world, hiding behind old and new pseudonyms with articles that engaged the best representatives of French Catholic theology and criticism. For twenty years the Herzog-Dupin case remained an enigma. In 1929, Salet, having obtained decisive proof, published a new article listing Turmel’s complete array of pseudonyms and works. On 6 Nov. 1930 the Holy See declared him excommunicated, vitandus, and degraded from the clerical state.
In his later years he published an Histoire du diable (Paris 1931) in the Christianisme series edited by P. L. Couchoud, a brief study on the Apocalypse (ibid. 1938), and an attack on the Shroud of Turin (ibid. 1938), and from 1930 to 1931 he issued in six volumes a venomous Histoire des dogmes. Of his destructive work nothing remains that has not been promptly refuted; of the man himself there remains a severe judgment for the double game he systematically pursued for more than twenty years.
His principal works, apart from those mentioned, are: S. Jérôme (Paris 1905); Histoire du dogme de la papauté des origines jusqu’à la fin du IVe siècle (ibid. 1908); (H. Delafosse), Les écrits de St Paul (4 vols., ibid. 1925-27); (L. Coulange), Catéchisme pour adultes (2 vols., ibid. 1929-30); (C. Indice dei Libri proibiti sotto T., Delafosse, Herzog, Dupin, Coulange).