Debate: Alfred Loisy and the Making of History of Religions

In her book, Annelies Lannoy explores the emergence of the history of religions as an academic discipline in France and Europe between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The analysis is centered on the work of Alfred Loisy (1857-1940), a modernist priest and future professor of the history of religions at the Collège de France. Unlike his modernist theology, which has been the subject of numerous studies, Loisy's works devoted to the comparative history of religions, and his correspondence with the main actors of this discipline at the time -F. Cumont, M. Mauss, or J.G. Frazer- remain largely unknown. This monograph is the first that gives a complete picture of Loisy's career as a historian of religion before and after his excommunication in 1908. It highlights the scientification of the discipline between 1890 and 1920, the importance of the national and transnational scholarly networks around which it was organized, and the theoretical debates that animated the study of religions at that time.

Annelies Lannoy is a historian of ideas. She is particularly interested in the history of religious sciences and classical philology. After studying philology, she obtained her PhD at Ghent University (2012) with a dissertation on the works of Franz Cumont and Alfred Loisy and the modernist crisis of the Catholic Church. Specializing in archival research and the study of scientific correspondence, she has conducted several research projects on the foundation of the history of religions as a scientific discipline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on the scientific networks that animate the study of ancient religions in this period, and on the comparative historiography of Judaism, Christianity, and the religions of the ancient Mediterranean.