Louis Duchesne

Louis Duchesne.

Louis Marie Olivier Duchesne (13 September 1843 – 21 April 1922) was a French priest, philologist, teacher and a critical historian of Christianity and Roman Catholic liturgy and institutions.

Descended from a family of Breton sailors, he was born in 1843 in Saint-Servan, Roulais place, now part of Saint-Malo on the Breton coast, and was orphaned at a young age, in 1849, after the death of his father Jacques Duchesne. Marc Tanguy, a relative, was one of the survivors of 74-gun ship Redoutable at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Louis' brother Jean-Baptiste Duchesne settled in Oregon, and arrived at Oregon City in 1849.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1867. Louis Duchesne taught for many years in Saint-Brieuc, then went to study in Paris, where he influenced the reformist Alfred Firmin Loisy, a founder of the failed movement to bring Catholicism into sympathy with science, the modern social sciences and philosophy, called "Catholic modernism" which eventually precipitated the crisis in the Church under Pope Pius X in the years around 1907.^[1] In 1876 he became a member of the École française in Rome; he eventually became its director. He was an amateur archaeologist and organized expeditions from Rome to Mount Athos, to Syria, and Asia Minor, from which he gained an interest in the early history of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1887 he published the results of his thesis, followed by the first complete critical edition of the Liber Pontificalis. (Theodor Mommsen was also working on a critical study, but it was never finished). At a difficult time for critical historians applying modern methods to Church history, drawing together archaeology and topography to supplement literature and setting ecclesiastical events with contexts of social history, Abbé Duchesne was in constant correspondence with like-minded historians among the Bollandists, with their long history of critical editions of hagiographies.

He also wrote Les Sources du martyrologe hyéronimien, Origines du culte chrétien (translated as Christian Worship: Its Origin and Evolution and often reprinted), Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, and Les Premiers temps de l'État pontifical. These works were universally praised, and he was appointed a commander of the Legion of Honor. However, his Histoire ancienne de l'Église, 1906‑11 (translated as Early History of the Christian Church) was considered too modernist by the Church during the "Modernist crisis" and was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1912.

In 1888 he became a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, and in 1910 he was elected to the Académie française. He died in 1922 in Rome and is buried in the cemetery of Saint-Servan.

Notes

1. ^ Michael Morton Catholic Modernism (1896-1914)

Works

• Mémoire sur une mission au mont Athos (Paris: E. Thorin, 1876)
• Les Nouveaux textes de Saint Clément de Rome, 1877
• De codicibus MSS Graecis Pii II in bibliotheca Alexandrino-Vaticana, Paris 1880
• Origines du culte chrétien: etude sur la liturgie latine avant Charlemagne (1889)
• Christian worship : its origin and evolution : a study of the Latin liturgy up to the time of Charlemagne. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1903. pp. 557. http://www.archive.org/details/christianworshi00duchgoog. . Next printing 1919 and 1931 (5th ed.) also in New York : Macmillan Company.
• The churches separated from Rome. K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & co. ltd. 1907. pp. 224. 
• Early history of the Christian church from its foundation to the end of the third century. 1-2. London: J. Murray. 1909. pp. 428. http://www.archive.org/stream/earlyhistorychr00duchgoog#page/n6/mode/2up. 
• Scripta minora : études de topographie romaine et de géographie ecclésiastique. Rome: École française de Rome. 1973.  - commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Louis Duchesne.

References

• Joassart, B., editor Monseigneur Duchesne et les Bollandistes: Correspondance 2002. 122 letters between Duchesne and the Bollandists

External links

• Table of "Personalities and interpreters of the modernist movement" in the Roman Catholic Church

Cultural offices
Preceded by François-Désiré Mathieu	Seat 36 Académie française 1910-1922	Succeeded by Henri Brémond

Persondata
Name	Duchesne, Louis
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	13 September 1843
Place of birth
Date of death	21 April 1922
Place of death