The Catholic Career of Alfred Loisy
It takes perhaps some boldness of assertion to maintain that the life-story of an author relatively unknown—at least to the English-reading world — deserves to rank with those acknowledged masterpieces of religious autobiography, the Apologia pro Vita Sua of John Henry Newman, and the Souvenirs d�...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1918
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1918, Volume: 11, Issue: 1, Pages: 36-73 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | It takes perhaps some boldness of assertion to maintain that the life-story of an author relatively unknown—at least to the English-reading world — deserves to rank with those acknowledged masterpieces of religious autobiography, the Apologia pro Vita Sua of John Henry Newman, and the Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse of Ernest Renan. Renan and Newman were born leaders of men, each drawing after himself a train of zealous disciples, and followed by an admiring public. Both were consummate artists in words, knowing full well how to make the most of the dramatic and human element that chance or their own choice had woven into their careers. Each produced a long row of eloquent volumes, and their writings not only enjoyed the widest vogue in their own day but are among the works of the nineteenth century whose significance is still far from being exhausted. Each was a convert — the one into Roman Catholicism, the other out of it — and so their self-revelations appeal to the psychological interest of such a process, when the subject of it is a man of genius, and no less to the historical interest attaching to any conspicuous individual whose career has become interwoven with the Church of Rome. The Choses Passées of Professor Alfred Loisy assuredly did not originate in any conscious imitation of these two famous writers, although both were conspicuous among his formative influences. But his book belongs in the same class with theirs, and in its distinction of style, its dramatic and human appeal, and its psychological and historical interest, as I shall try in this article to show, falls no whit behind. It is my confident belief, at least, that Choses Passées bids fair to become in its turn a classic to be placed beside the Apologia and the Souvenirs on the shelf of the student of religion, as a document of outstanding significance for the intellectual and religious evolution of the last quarter-century. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000012049 |