decision by Caiaphas, and its one solemn condemnation of Jesus, by Pilate. Mark’s narratives of the sepulture by Joseph of Arimathea and of the empty tomb are taken as posterior to St Paul; the narratives of the infancy in Matthew and Luke as later still. Yet the great bulk of the sayings remain substantially authentic; if the historicity of certain words and acts is here refused with unusual assurance, that of other sayings and deeds is established with stronger proofs; and the redemptive conception of the Passion and the sacramental interpretation of the Last Supper are found to spring up promptly and legitimately from our Lord’s work and words, to saturate the Pauline and Johannine writings, and even to constitute an element of all three synoptic Gospels.
Simples Réflexions sur le décret Lamentabili et sur l’encyclique Pascendi, 12mo, 277 pages, was published from Ceffonds a few days after the commentary. Each proposition of the decree is carefully tracked to its probable source, and is often found to modify the latter’s meaning. And the study of the encyclical concludes: “Time is the great teacher . . . we would do wrong to despair either of our civilization or of the Church.”
The Church authorities were this time not slow to act. On the 14th of February Mgr Amette, the new archbishop of Paris, prohibited his diocesans to read or defend the two books, which “attack and deny several fundamental dogmas of Christianity,” under pain of excommunication. The abbé again declared “it is impossible for me honestly and sincerely to make the act of absolute retractation and submission exacted by the sovereign pontiff.” And the Holy Office, on the 7th of March, pronounced the major excommunication against him. At the end of March Loisy published Quelques Lettres (December 1903–February 1908), which conclude: “At bottom I have remained in my last writings on the same line as in the earlier ones. I have aimed at establishing principally the historical position of the various questions, and secondarily the necessity for reforming more or less the traditional concepts.”
Three chief causes appear jointly to have produced M. Loisy’s very absolute condemnation. Any frank recognition of the abbé’s even general principles involves the abandonment of the identification of theology with scholasticism or even with specifically ancient thought in general. The abbé’s central position, that our Lord himself held the proximateness of His second coming, involves the loss by churchmen of the prestige of directly divine power, since Church and Sacraments, though still the true fruits and vehicles of his life, death and spirit, cannot thus be immediately founded by the earthly Jesus himself. And the Church policy, as old as the times of Constantine, to crush utterly the man who brings more problems and pressure than the bulk of traditional Christians can, at the time, either digest or resist with a fair discrimination, seemed to the authorities the one means to save the very difficult situation.
Bibliography.—Autobiographical passages in M. Loisy’s Autour d’un petit livre (Paris, 1903), pp. xv. xvi. 1, 2, 157, 218. A full account of his literary activity and ecclesiastical troubles will be found in Abbé Albert Houtin’s La Question biblique au XIX e siècle (Paris, 2nd ed., 1902) and La Question biblique au XX e siècle (Paris, 1906), but the latter especially is largely unfair to the conservatives and sadly lacking in religious feeling. The following articles and booklets concerning M. Loisy and the questions raised by him are specially remarkable. France: Père Durand, S.J., Études religieuses (Paris, Nov. 1901) frankly describes the condition of ecclesiastical biblical studies; Monseigneur Mignot, archbishop of Albi, Lettres sur les études ecclésiastiques 1900–1901 (collected ed., Paris, 1908) and “Critique et tradition” in Le Correspondant (Paris, 10th January 1904), the utterances of a finely trained judgment; Mgr Le Camus, bishop of La Rochelle, Fausse Exégèse, mauvaise théologie (Paris, 1902), a timid, mostly rhetorical, scholar’s protest; Père Lagrange, a Dominican who has done much for the spread of Old Testament criticism, La Méthode historique, surtout à propos de l’Ancien Testament (Paris, 1903) and Éclaircissement to same (ibid. 1903); P. Lagrange, Mgr P. Batiffol, P. Portalié, S. J., “Autour des fondements de la Foi” in the Bulletin de litt. eccl. Toulouse (Paris, December 1903, January 1904), very suggestive papers; Professor Maurice Blondel’s “Histoire et dogma,” in La Quinzaine (Paris January 16, February 16, 1904), F. de Hugel’s “Du Christ éternel et des christologies successives” (ibid. June 1, 1904), the Abbé J. Wehrle’s “Le Christ et la conscience catholique” (ibid. August 16, 1904) and F. de Hügel’s “Correspondance” (ibid. Sept. 16, 1904) discuss the relations between faith and the affirmation of phenomenal happenings; Paul Sabatier, “Les Derniers Ouvrages de l’Abbé Loisy,” in the Revue chrétienne (Dôle, 1904) and Paul Desjardins’ Catholicisme et critique (Paris, 1905), a Broad Church Protestant’s and a moralist agnostic’s delicate appreciations; a revue of Les Évangiles synoptiques by the Abbé Mangenot, in Revue du Clergé français (Feb. 15, 1908) containing some interesting discriminations; a revue by L. in the Revue biblique (1908), pp. 608-620, a mixture of unfair insinuation, powerful criticism and discriminating admissions; and a paper by G. P. B. and Jacques Chevalier in the Annales de philosophie chrétienne (Paris, Jan. 1909) seeks to trace and to refute certain philosophical presuppositions at work in the book’s treatment, especially of the Miracles, the Resurrection and the Institution of the Church. Italy: “Lettres Romaines” in Annales de philosophie chrétienne (Paris, January–March 1904), an Italian theologian’s fearless defence of Loisy’s main New Testament positions; Rev. P. Louis Billot S.J., De sacra traditione (Freiburg i. Br. 1905), the ablest of the scholastic criticisms of the historical method by a highly influential French professor of theology, now many years in Rome; Quello che vogliamo (Rome, 1907, Eng. trans., What we want, by A. L. Lilley, London, 1907), and Il Programma dei Modernisti (ibid. 1908), Eng. trans., The Programme of Modernism ed. by Lilley (London, eloquent 1098), pleadings by Italian priest, substantially on M. Loisy’s lines; “L’Abate Loisy e il Problema dei Vangeli Sinottici,” four long papers signed “H.” in Il Rinnovamento (Milan, 1908, 1909) are candid and circumspect. Germany: Professor E. Troeltsch, “Was heisst Wesen des Christentums?” 6 arts. in Die christliche Welt (Leipzig, autumn 1903), a profound criticism of M. Loisy’s developmental defence of Catholicism; Professor Harnack’s review of L’Évangile et l’Église in the Theol. Literatur-Zeitung (Leipzig, 23rd January 1904) is generous and interesting; Professor H. J. Holtzmann’s “Urchristentum u. Reform-Katholizismus,” in the Prot. Monatshefte, vii. 5 (Berlin, 1903), “Der Fall Loisy,” ibid. ix. 1, and his review of “Les Évangiles synoptiques” in Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert (Munich, May 3, 1908) are full of facts and of deep thought; Fr. F. von Hummelauer, Exegetisches zur Inspirationsfrage (Freiburg i. Br. 1904) is a favourable specimen of present-day German Roman Catholic scholarship. America: Professor C. A. Briggs, “The Case of the Abbé Loisy,” Expositor (London, April 1905), and C. A. Briggs and F. von Hügel, The Papal Commission and the Pentateuch (London, 1907) discuss Rome’s attitude towards biblical science. England: The Rev. T. A. Lacey’s Harnack and Loisy, with introduction by Viscount Halifax (London, 1904); “The Encyclical and M. Loisy” (Church Times, Feb. 20, 1908); “Recent Roman Catholic Biblical Criticism” (The Times Literary Supplement for January 15th, 22nd, 29th, 1904), and “The Synoptic Gospels” (review in The Times Literary Supplement, March 26, 1908) are interesting pronouncements respectively of two Tractarian High Churchmen and of a disciple of Canon Sanday. Professor Percy Gardner’s paper in the Hibbert Journal, vol. i. (1903) p. 603, is the work of a Puritan-minded, cultured Broad Church layman. (F. v. H.)
LOJA (formerly written Loxa), a town of southern Spain, in the
province of Granada, on the Granada-Algeciras railway. Pop.
(1900) 19,143. The narrow and irregular streets of Loja wind
up the sides of a steep hill surmounted by a Moorish citadel;
many of the older buildings, including a fine Moorish bridge,
were destroyed by an earthquake in December 1884, although
two churches of the early 16th century remained intact. An iron
bridge spans the river Genil, which flows past the town on the
north, forcing a passage through the mountains which encircle
the fertile and beautiful Vega of Granada. This passage would
have afforded easy access to the territory still held by the Moors
in the last half of the 15th century, had not Loja been strongly
fortified; and the place was thus of great military importance,
ranking with the neighbouring town of Alhama as one of the keys
of Granada. Its manufactures consist chiefly of coarse woollens,
silk, paper and leather. Salt is obtained in the neighbourhood.
Loja, which, has sometimes been identified with the ancient Ilipula, or with the Lacibi (Lacibis) of Pliny and Ptolemy, first clearly emerges in the Arab chronicles of the year 890. It was taken by Ferdinand III. in 1226, but was soon afterwards abandoned, and was not finally recaptured until the 28th of May, 1486, when it surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella after a siege.
LOKEREN, an important industrial town of Belgium between Ghent and Antwerp (in East Flanders on the Durme). Pop. (1904) 21,869. It lies at the southern point of the district called Pays de Waes, which in the early part of the 19th century was only sandy moorland, but is now the most highly cultivated and thickly populated tract in Belgium. The church of St Laurence is of some interest.
