Secular Scholarship in France

Abstract

Abstract Between the French and German worlds of knowledge, a complex movement of cultural and intellectual transfers retained capital importance, from Voltaire’s days at the court of Friedrich II in Potsdam to Heine’s Parisian years, and beyond. On the French side, such contacts in the study of religions can often be traced to the activity of Protestant and Jewish scholars. The French-speaking Protestant theologians, including those in Geneva and in the Huguenot “Refuge” in Holland, sought to emulate liberal Lutheran theologians in the leading German universities, developing daring new approaches to Scriptural interpretation, while many Jewish scholars moved from Germany to France in search of academic posts. This forms the background to the unique development in France of a non-theological study of religion, by Protestant and Jewish scholars together with their Catholic colleagues, in new, secular institutions.