Du Christianisme Research Articles

Histoire du Christianisme: Pour mieux comprendre notre temps (review)

General and Miscellaneous Histoire du Christianisme: Pour mieux comprendre notre temps. Edited by Alain Corbin, with Nicole LeMaitre, Francoise Thelamon, and Catherine Vincent. [L'Universe Historique.] (Paris: Editions du Seuil. 2007. Pp. 475. euro21,00 paperback.) Most one-volume histories of the Church are usually written by one person, or two at most.This one-volume Histoire du Christianisme is written by fiftysix authors! One does wonder why there was such a massive effort to put together what is a straightforward and largely ordinary history of the Church. I suspect that this book is partly an attempt to reclaim for France its essential grounding in Christianity, and especially Catholicism, and to remind its readers that the history of the Church is not something that can be discarded so easily as attendance at Mass. The involvement of such a large collection of well-known scholars-mostly lay people and chosen principally from state universities-is to underline the urgency of such a task. The European Union's exclusion of any mention of Christianity in its recent constitution has hopefully sent shock waves through the European academic community, awaking them to the fact that the knowledge of the involvement and importance of Christianity in the formation of Europe may possibly be lost. Europe may not be the Faith, nor the Faith Europe, as Hilaire BeEoc claimed in the early twentieth century, but Belloc was a lot closer to the truth than the drafters of the EU constitution. The book is divided into four major parts, each prefaced by an overview by one of the editors: 1 (Au Commencement), 2 (Le MoyenAge), 3 (Les temps modernes), and 4 (Le temps de l'Adaption). There are many good things to be said about this book. The editors express a desire that the book appeal to a wide audience (at least in France), and in this they should succeed. For the most part, important issues or episodes are addressed and balanced opinions given. The general editors did an admirable job of avoiding repetition in content.The short chapters allowed some latitude in topics. There are particularly interesting chapters on St. Paul and why he chose regional capitals as his bases of operation (by Marie-Francoise Basiez), St. Jerome and his Latin translation of the Old and New Testaments (by YvesMarie Duval), the cathedral (by Catherine Vincent), and the Cult of Mary (Sylvie Barnay). One of the more interesting chapters was on the race to catechize the faithful and especially the young, during the Reformation, on both the Protestant and Catholic fronts (by Marc Venard). …

Apocalypse contre constellations. La réfutation de l’Origine de tous les cultes de Dupuis par le père Lambert

The Dominican Bernard Lambert was one of the central representatives of French figurism at the end of the 18th century, and was the author of numerous prophetic and political works. In 1796, during the reconstruction of the French church, he published La Vérité de la sainteté du christianisme (The Truth of the holiness of Christianity), which was the first refutation of the Origine de tous les cultes (Origin of all religious cults) of Charles-François Dupuis, the deputy of the National Convention. Esteemed equally by the adversaries of the Civil constitution of the clergy and by the editors of the Annales de la Religion (Annals of Religion), Lambert’s work affirms a conception of history that was linked to his own millenarian aspirations.

Chateaubriand avant le Génie du Christianisme : Actes du Colloque ENS Ulm (review)

Reviewed by: Chateaubriand avant le Génie du Christianisme: Actes du Colloque ENS Ulm Dorothy M. Betz Didier, Béatrice and Emanuelle Tabet , eds. Chateaubriand avant le Génie du Christianisme: Actes du Colloque ENS Ulm. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006. Pp. 161. ISBN 2-7453-1284-7. This series of papers focuses on the early career of Chateaubriand the beginning of which is well covered from a biographical point of view by George D. Painter's Chateaubriand: A Biography, Volume i (1768–93), The Longed-for Tempests (New York: Knopf, 1978). This collection targets aspects of Chateaubriand's writing, especially in his Essai sur les Révolutions and rounds out the earlier years with subsequent material from the Mémoires d'outre-tombe. Patrizia Nerozzi opens the volume with the most biographical essay, "Sept ans de séjour en Angleterre" (1793–1800). This period is the one to be treated in detail, and the events of Chateaubriand's trip to America remain mainly as background. In England, Chateaubriand frequented a community of émigrés with whom he shared economic difficulties and political discussions. He was influenced both by political writers such as Burke and romantics, particularly Byron. Laura Brignoli examines the imagery of the Essai sur les Révolutions to define [End Page 158] patterns of recurring motifs that express historical ideas through images drawn from nature. Storms, torrents, and the sea convey emotions close to Chateaubriand's experience and linked to his preoccupation with death. Aurelio Principato and Jean-Paul Clément both develop ideas related to the influence of Rousseau. Principato contrasts various heroic figures ranging between portraits of American savages and heroes of antiquity. Chateaubriand moved away from Rousseau's vision of the noble savage, seeing primitive people as sometimes childlike and evolving with changes in society. Older figures, from Orpheus to père Aubry, represent more experienced heroes. Clément similarly shows how Rousseau's pastoral ideal could not survive in Chateaubriand's view of the world after the French Revolution. Other influences including Fénelon, a Breton ideal of noblesse oblige, and concepts of government based on examples from ancient Greece combine to produce a new ideal closer to constitutional monarchy. While Chateaubriand's ideas did evolve, Philippe Antoine traces continuities between the Essai and the Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem. Both works combine literary sources and subjective elements in a digressive format that includes fragments concerning both past and future times. Fabienne Bercegol returns to the Essai to show how Chateaubriand reacted against eighteenth-century theories of government that had led to the Revolution while maintaining respect for earlier writers. Ideas from authors such as Rousseau were irresponsibly applied to incite violence, and Chateaubriand sees the need for caution in writing about a culture in decline. Nicolas Perot and Emmanuelle Tabet present early compositions that were incorporated into the Génie du Christianisme. Perot shows how more lengthy descriptive language in earlier fragments of the Génie was condensed in the final work. Early ideas are retained, but with some loss of their original coherence. Tabet contrasts the poetic composition Tableaux de la Nature with early and later versions of the Génie to document a movement away from the influences of Delille and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and toward more condensed prose passages where images such as tombs and birds retain links with both exoticism and antiquity. Finally, Marie-Elizabeth Bougeard-Vetö analyses the translations from English Chateaubriand made during his years in exile. Some of his translation was done for money, but Chateaubriand also worked on authors with whom he felt a personal affinity. His most lasting interest was in Milton, leading to his 1836 translation of Paradise Lost. He also shared the enthusiasms of the English romantics for Young and Beattie and especially for the poetry of Ossian. Chateaubriand began by adopting the eighteenth-century manner of translation that sought to adapt texts culturally. Thus a proper translation into French should suppress any material a French audience might find offensive to good taste. This does lead to a certain amount of simplification. Dorothy M. Betz Georgetown University Copyright © 2007 The University of Nebraska Press

Histoire ecclésiastique (review)

Reviewed by: Histoire ecclésiastique Jonathan Armstrong Socrate de Constantinople Histoire ecclésiastique Traduction par Pierre Périchon et Pierre MaravalSources chrétiennes 477 [Book I] and 493 [Books II–III]Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2004/2005 Pp. 267/366. €27/30. Socrates Scholasticus, the first of the three famed continuators of Eusebius's Historia Ecclesiastica, compiled his seven-volume work during the fourth decade of the fifth century. The present French translation follows the critical edition of the Greek text published by Günther Christian Hansen in 1995 (GCS). Pierre Maraval's concise and informative footnotes render the Sources chrétiennes edition worth the additional effort for English readers. Neither of the English translations available, whether the anonymous version of 1844 (Bohn's Ecclesiastical Library) [End Page 124] or the 1890 revision of this translation by A. C. Zenos (NPNF), was based on critical editions. Further, both closely followed the now antiquated notes of Valesius originally published in 1668. Volume I (SC 477) includes a twenty-six page introduction, featuring a biographical sketch of Socrates, an essay outlining his historical project, and a few paragraphs on manuscript transmission. In the footnotes to the main text, Maraval furnishes the reader with ample bibliography, and he painstakingly reconstructs Socrates' use of sources, commenting on his dependence on and divergence from the narratives of Eusebius, Rufinus, Sozomen, Theodoret, Philostorgius, Athanasius, et al. Volume II (SC 493) does not include an independent introduction. Socrates' express purpose in composing his history was to correct Eusebius's presentation of the Arian crisis (I.1.1–2), an episode that all but consumes books I and II of his oeuvre. He at first relied upon Rufinus for his report on the crisis, but after discovering Athanasius's apologies and becoming aware of factual errors in Rufinus's work, Socrates rewrote books I and II completely (II.1.1–4). Socrates' vigilance in guarding the accuracy of his account of the Arian crisis substantiates his claim that he considered it to be of greatest thematic significance for his history. He also criticizes Eusebius's brevity in recounting the rise of Manichaeism (I.22.2). In Eusebius's failure to record the testimony of the Novatian bishop Acesius at the Council of Nicea, Socrates believed himself to have discovered a sinister prejudice against the Novatians (I.10.5). His persistent reporting on sects and heresies alike has led certain scholars to question his orthodoxy, and Maraval recommends Martin Wallraff's proposal that Socrates was in fact a Novatian (Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates, 1997). Whereas Eusebius's historiography is oriented towards the development of orthodoxy, Socrates' vision of church history is focused on the divisions among Christians. Maraval even quips that without factions within the church, the church historian would have nothing to write about (I.18.15)! His conclusion merits quotation: "Non peut-être sans quelque anachronisme, on pourrait dire que Socrate veut écrire une histoire du christianisme sous tous ses aspects plutôt qu'une histoire de l'Église, ce qui n'était certainement pas la conception d'Eusèbe, pour lequel il n'y a qu'une Église" (15–16). The first three books of Socrates' history represent a rich source of information concerning Athanasius's dramatic career. Socrates recounts his altercations with Arius, his repeated exiles from Alexandria, and the slanderous and sometimes ridiculous accusations of his politically powerful enemies. The charge that forced Athanasius into exile for the first time, for example, was that he had amputated Arsenius's hand for the purposes of divination (I.27.18). Together with the inspiring accounts of Athanasius's personal courage, Socrates draws up a play-by-play diagram of the councils that anticipates the final victory of Nicene-Constantinopolitan orthodoxy, including the councils of Antioch, Sardica, Sirmium, Milan, Rimini, Seleucia, Constantinople, and Alexandria. His reporting on the councils may lack the luster of modern journalism, but he renders a valuable service to future historians in reproducing the credos achieved at each conclave. One wonders whether Socrates, who viewed "tromperie dialectique" as the true villain of church history (I.18.15), actually intended his reader to be irritated by [End Page 125] the tiresome repetition of the...

Nouveaux manuels de patrologie

Some recent patrology manuals are presented here (H.R. Drobner, Cl. Moreschini and E. Norelli, J. Laporte) as well as some more specific reference works (a volume of the Nouvelle histoire de la litterature latine devoted to the beginnings of Christian literature; a volume of the Patrologia published by the Augustinianum devoted to the post-Chalcedonian Fathers; Introduction aux Apologistes grecs by B. Pouderon) or more general works (Le printemps du christianisme by P. Vanderlinden).

The Bautain Circle and Catholic-Jewish Relations in Modern France

Strasbourg in the 1820's was the site for the formation of a circle of religious seekers who gathered around the philosopher Louis-Eug�ne-Marie Bautain.�This group, which included Jews as well as Catholics, encouraged for a time the Jewish members to practice their religion and serve their community, "to become good Jews" in the words of Bautain.�Although the Jewish members, including Th�odore Ratisbonne, the founder of the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, ultimately were baptized and ordained as Catholic priests, the exchanges in the circle, as recorded in Bautain's Philosophie du christianisme (1835), suggest the potential for a more tolerant attitude on the part of Catholics, one that respected the religious value of Judaism and the religious liberty of Jews.�

Revolutions in Time: Chateaubriand on the Antiquity of the Earth

Revolutions in TimeChateaubriand on the Antiquity of the Earth Katia Sainson In his Philosophy of History, Hegel writes of the French Revolution as a key moment in the intellectual history of civilization that effected a major shift in the human race's epistemological perspective of the world and its ability to shape that world. In his attempt to convey the magnitude of this "glorious mental dawn,"1 Hegel refers to an earlier intellectual breakthrough, which similarly caused humans to reevaluate their place in the universe. He writes: Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets revolved around it had it been perceived that man's existence centers in his head, that is, in thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of reality.2 With this comparison to the Copernican Revolution, which interestingly enough evokes both the astronomical acceptation of revolution as a cyclical orbit in order to describe the more modern connotation of revolution as a radical change that marks a clear and perhaps even destructive break with the past, Hegel equates the French Revolution with what was not only a key moment in the history of science but perhaps more importantly an intellectual shift that marked "the rise of the world-view of modern European culture."3 Another epistemological shift had also developed over the course of the eighteenth century, one that, like Hegel's "mental dawn," prompted questions about human kind's perspective on history. As Paolo Rossi has pointed out in his work The Dark Abyss of Time, when Robert Hooke studied those "figured stones" that we now call fossils at the beginning of the eighteenth century it was commonly accepted that the Earth's past, as was evidenced by the Scriptures, spanned only six thousand years, whereas by the end of the century, contemporaries of the French Revolution could look back on a past that was by then [End Page 47] regarded as consisting not of thousands but rather of millions of years. This shift was no less comparable to the establishment of the heliocentric heavens: The difference lies not only between living at the center or at the margins of the universe, but also between living in a present relatively close to the origins (and having at hand, what is more, a text that narrates the entire history of the world) or living instead in a present behind which stretches the "dark abyss" (the term is Buffon's) of an infinite time.4 This shift in the conceptualization of the natural world is a direct consequence of what has been dubbed the "discovery of time," in other words, the understanding of the temporal dimension of natural processes that meant that Nature—which was now perceived as having a history—was "no longer opposed, as the reign of the immutable, to history, which [was] the reign of becoming and change."5 In this article I will examine how René de Chateaubriand, one of the most important literary figures of the post-Revolutionary era, dealt with the "discovery of time" in his reflections on history. It is clear from the amount of space devoted to the subject of the antiquity of the earth in such early works as L'Essai sur les révolutions and Le Génie du christianisme that Chateaubriand was struggling with the issues raised by new geological evidence. But perhaps more importantly, notwithstanding his position on the age of the earth, Chateaubriand's historical vision, much like the great naturalists of his time, portrays a universe in which the evidence of multiple past revolutions only proves that European man does not stand at the center of the historical system but rather as a diminished figure on history's margins. It is in this sense that Chateaubriand, who so staunchly argues against the antiquity of the earth, seems to have felt the shock waves not only of political revolution but also of his era's new Copernican revolution. Before discussing the place of this epistemological revolution in Chateaubriand's historiography let us first briefly examine some of the works that formed the backdrop to Chateaubriand's writing on this subject. This survey includes the works of the...

Literatura e catolicismo na França (1880-1914): contribuição a uma sociohistória da crença

O artigo delineia a história da emergência do "escritor católico" como uma nova figura intelectual na França pós-Revolução de 1789, desde o surgimento do Génie du christianisme de Chateaubriand, passando pelo papel do abade Félicité de Lammenais, pelo do jornalista Louis Veuillot, pelos "neo-cristãos" dos anos de 1880 e 1890, até as primeiras manifestações do "renascimento literário católico" da década de 1910. Essa "renovação católica" teve de lidar com desafios propriamente literários, suscitados pela dinâmica orientada pelas regras da arte, ao lado de disputas doutrinárias no interior de uma Igreja com poder temporal declinante, confrontada com a emancipação dos leigos. O desvendamento desse processo histórico contribui para uma história social da crença no poder da arte e para uma reflexão acerca dos motivos intelectuais da crença na Igreja como instituição.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Géopolitique du christianisme, Blandine Chélini‐Pont and Raphaël Liogler, edsUna Introduction a la Mission, by Carlos F. Cardoza OrlandiMission An Essential guide by Carlos F. Cardoza Orlandi

L'abbé Gauchat : un apologiste des Lumières

In 1768, when abbé Gauchat's Accord du christianisme et de la raison was published, the conflict between defenders of the Enlightenment and those of religion had reached its height. But behind these criticisms, we can see common principles. Thus, Gauchat is willing to accord an important place to the physico-theological proof of God, referring to Newton. The principle of causality is part of the reflection of many enlightened thinkers. Likewise, the moralisation of Christianity, in a utilitarian perspective, used the philosophes' arguments against the risk that Christianity represented for society. Finally, the use of the principle of non-contradiction was similar to the principles of the rationalists. Gauchat's position was based on a Christianised cogito from which the notion of Redemption had disappeared.

Moral philosophy and economics: the formation of François Huet's doctrine of property rights*

François Huet (1814–1869), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ghent, is known for his attempt to reconcile Christianity with socialism in Le Règne Social du Christianisme (1853). The book clearly belongs to a distinctively Belgian tradition of ‘liberal socialism’. Drawing upon archival material, we try to clarify the origins of Huet's theory of property rights. We focus on two intimately related questions: (1) Have the core ideas formulated by Huet in Le Règne been expressed and discussed before the publication of the book? (2) In what sense have reflections upon the science of economics contributed to Huet's views?

Histoire du Christianisme des origines à nos jours Sous la direction de Jean- Marie Mayeur, Charles et Luce Pietri, André Vauchez, Marc Venard

Histoire du Christianisme des origines a nos jours. Sous la direction de JeanMarie Mayeur, Charles et Luce Pietri,Andre Vauchez, Marc Venard. Tome IX: Lge de raison (1620-1750) sous la responsabilite de Marc Venard. (Paris: Desclee. 1997. Pp. 1216. 480 FE) LAge de raison (1620-1750), the ninth in a projected series of twelve tomes appearing under the general title Histoire du Christianisme, avoids strict historical narrative and presents instead a collection of well documented articles arranged along four broad thematic lines. Because of its institutional focus, L'Age de raison is mainly traditional in scope and it is the better for this. Those favoring esoteric investigations may not care for the book's organization or emphases, which are entirely in keeping with a survey of this type. However LAge de raison defies easy categorization because it follows the two preceding tomes surveying the Reformation era [t. 7, De la reforme a la Reformation (1450-1530) and t. 8,Le temps des confessions (1530-1620)],while also serving as the transitional volume to the revolutionary era (1750-1830) that is to be examined in the tenth volume of the series. Fortunately, contributors to the ninth tome include such seasoned scholars as Bernard Vogler of Strasbourg and Willem Frijhoff of Rotterdam, who have deliberately written in a straightforward descriptive manner that avoids polemics and builds upon the consensus of scholarly opinion. As a collaborative work, L'Age de raison primarily aims to synthesize. Each chapter contains extensive footnotes as well as selective bibliographies of mostly secondary sources in French. English titles, however, do not figure prominently, and the coverage of English history is less than satisfying. The volume's index also excludes subjects, thereby limiting its reference utility. In a volume that evaluates the entire Christian world, the paucity of reliable maps (only ten) is disappointing. On a positive note, the editor, Marc Venard, professor emeritus of modern history at the University of Paris and president of the Societe d'Histoire religieuse de la France, has assembled a readable, up-to-date survey of Christianity that covers the overlapping periods of Catholic Reformation and pre-Enlightenment. Professor Venard, who has contributed several pieces here, including a chapter on Christian culture and la morale (pp. 990-1033), has made use of nearly two dozen capable scholars, of whom all but six are French. Their emphasis is westcentral European. The majority of the chapters deal with Roman Catholicism. Protestantism is covered and the Eastern Churches receive some, though by no means sufficient, comment. Readers probably should not expect otherwise in a publication that is mainly the product of French scholarship. The only North American contributor is the University of Montreal's Professor Dominique Deslandres, who writes on Christianity in the New World. This chapter is lengthy but not out of place. It is, however, too ambitious, summarizing religious life in the different colonies (Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Dutch), while also discussing Christian interactions with Native Americans and African slaves. Deslandres' description is included in Part III,Le Christianisme dans le monde, and therefore combined with two additional chapters: one of which is a brief description of Africa (examined by Philippe Denis of the University of Natal), the other a competent discussion of the propagation of the faith throughout the Far East and India. The latter is written by the Jesuit scholar Philippe Lecrivain, who offers a lengthy and conventional analysis of the Christian missionaries and their theological squabbling instead of focusing on the perplexing varieties of Asian Christianity. In a volume that seeks to cover almost every major development from the Counter-Reformation to the early stages of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, English readers will no doubt find L Age de raison puzzling as choice of title. …

Gérard de Nerval et le polythéisme gréco-romain

Chateaubriand gives French romanticism its first impetus withLe Genie du christianisme, a work that proclaims, in aesthetic and literary matters, the superiority of the Christian religion over the polytheism of the classics. It has long been believed that the romantic period coincided in France with a notable decrease of the fortune and the influence of the Greco-Roman world. This is far from certain: In 1852, Baudelaire attacks the representatives of what he calls “L'Ecole paienne” (“The Pagan School”). Gerard de Nerval, Theophile Gautier and Heinrich Heine are the authors Baudelaire is mainly aiming at. What is, in the French romantic accord, the importance of that “Ecole paienne”? What part does Greco-Roman polytheism play in Nerval's work, especially in theVoyage en Orient and inLes Chimeres? This revival of ancient paganism constituted a weapon for scepticism against the Christian religion and the Catholic church.

Trois contemporains, Harnack, Freud, Loisy devant la notion de paternité divine

This paper is about an out-of-date conception in religious anthropology, divine fatherhood. With this particular reference, it is a study concerning two divines (Harnack and Loisy) and a physician (Freud) living at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. All three were present and active when the Holy sciences became the Religious sciences. Ending with theoretical considerations, each section begins with a biographical sketch concerning successively H.'s, Fr.'s, L.'s attitudes to their father or to fatherly figures. Section I (Harnack) insists upon a focal idea in his theological views : considering God as a father, is the religious truth, the essence of Christianity, the core in the experience and the teaching of Jesus. This idea was permanent with him, whatever were the variations accepted in the detailed exegetical work. Section II (Freud) insists upon the relation between Freud's self-analysis and his ideas about divine fatherhood. Without this self-analysis and the discovery of the Oedipus complex, saying that, in the human thinking, a personal God is nothing more than a sort of a father, could just have been an expression of the religious attitudes in those days. According to Freud : (1) successions of events similar to the story of Oedipus were performed when new religions were founded, such as totemism, or when Moses (and Paul) were religious reformers ; (2) God is a father, but the devil is also a father ; (3) thinking of God as a father is important in maintaining religious institutions ; (4) but the existence of the "oceanic" sensation (this - religious ? - experience about which Romain Rolland wrote to Freud) is a problem for the theory of religion. At the beginning of section III (Loisy), two points can be noted : (1) his father was not for him an authoritarian figure ; (2) he had a difficult relationship with fatherly figures within the Roman church, including the Holy Father, until he became excommunicated. Besides, his faith and prayer were subjected to a crisis about the years 1885-1886. Before this happened, he had a mystical attitude when praying, while he was after this crisis morally faithful to God and to the Church. When he fights against protestant individualism, considering God as a father is to him only part of the religious feeling. In L'Evangile et l'Eglise, his critical study of Harnack's L'Essence du Christianisme, Loisy aims at psychological interpretations concerning scriptural expressions such as "the Son of God", "Father",.... After his excommunication, his religious thinking is still similar : God is the mystery ; religion is mysticism ; mystic, mystery, mysticism, and words alike, can be used concerning primitive magic, a sense of depersonalisation towards a cosmic unity, or the spiritual achievements of Monsieur Ollier as well. To be respectful - an ambivalent attitude - is also to him identical with religious feeling ; notwithstanding this ambivalence, he nowhere suspects that this respectful attitude could be equivalent to a son's reverence for his father. In the conclusion, this paper does not insist upon links connecting the temperamental biography (and/or the communautarian identity) with the religious thought of these three men. Harnack's ideas ar not far from a common religious feeling that was widespread in the XIXth century and which Freud studied. Although Freud and Loisy observed the existence of the same religious attitudes, including a son-to-father relationship and a sense of merging with boundless spaces and ages, their theories about the religious feeling are truly opposed. Consequently, questions must be asked about the use of the exact words and/or the unity of the subject matter, when we study religion, or religious feeling.

Indianisme et militantisme protestant. Veyssière de La Croze et son Histoire du christianisme des Indes

Sylvia Murr : Indology and militant Protestantism : Veyssière de La Croze's Histoire du Christianisme des Indes. La Croze's Histoire du Chistianisme des Indes (1724) provides an example of the utilisation of proto-ethnology in early 18th-century religious disputes. This exiled monk converted to Calvinism uses an enquiry into the Jesuits' missions in India to support the Huguenots' arguments against the Catholics. Besides the book's importance in diffusing B. Ziegelbalg's original material on the Malabar religion, it was influential in providing support for the patristic thesis of the Egyptian origin of the Hindu Religion. In addition to its fusion of Brahmins and Catholic clergy into a single caricature of superstition and religious trickery, this work led the way to the Enlightenment's use of Indology against all religions.

Phénoménologie de la conscience religieuse

Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron : Phenomenology of religious consciousness. The awakening of a religious consciousness in the last decades of the 18th C. can be seen in revolutionary ideology (Saint-Just, Danton, Robespierre) in which Revolution becomes Revelation. Fichte expresses this attitude in philosophy. In the aesthetic field we see a religious taste for the sublime. The intériorisation of religion is present in Hemsterhuis and Dutoit-Membriné. It takes new forms in Schleiermacher's Discourse on Religion (1799) and Chateaubriand's Génie du christianisme (1802), in which the exotic and sentimental are primordial. In 1807, Hegel demonstrated, in the Phenomenology of the Spirit, the significance of the religious revival ; art and religion are the means to attain Absolute Knowledge.

A Quaker Prisoner in France (1756)

THIS ARTICLE has a two-fold aim. Firstly, it sets out to give some notion of the reception and treatment accorded to William Reckitt, a Quaker who fell into French hands early in the Seven Years' War, and secondly, it attempts to show, in the light of Reckitt's experiences, to what extent the best-known French comments on the Quakers, those of Voltaire, represent an accurate picture of the Friends and of French reaction to them in the eighteenth century. Voltaire's references to the Quakers are numerous, ranging from the first four letters of the Lettres philosophiques (first published in England in 1733 and in France in 1734), which are entirely devoted to the sect, to quite important passages in the Essai sur les Mcurs (1756), the Traite' sur la Tolerance (1763), the Dictionnaire philosophique (1771-72) and the Histoire de 1'Etablissement du Christianisme (1776). It is of some interest to examine the picture which Voltaire gives of the Quakers for various reasons, not the least of which is that, tireless propagandist that he was, he undoubtedly uses the Quakers for his own ends just as, for example, in the Lettres philosophiques, he uses Shakespeare for his own ends, inserting into a translation of the To or not to be soliloquy from Hamlet such pieces of philosophe propaganda as an attack on the hypocrisy of nos pretres menteurs (Letter XVIII). Does he introduce similar distortions into his picture of the Quakers, whom he uses to further his case against the Catholic Church, against the waging of aggressive war, in favour of toleration, and so on? This propaganda use is apparent from the start, in the Lettres philosophiques, as well as in his later references to the Quakers. Perhaps the reference which would have been least acceptable to the Quakers themselves comes in the Essai sur les Mweurs, where Voltaire seeks to identify their standpoint with his own to the extent of making them mere deists:

Le Socrate du Christianisme Une thèse de doctorat suédoise sur Søren Kierkegaard

Orbis LitterarumVolume 18, Issue 1-2 p. 48-53 Le Socrate du Christianisme Une thèse de doctorat suédoise sur Søren Kierkegaard F. J. Billeskov Jansen, F. J. Billeskov JansenSearch for more papers by this author F. J. Billeskov Jansen, F. J. Billeskov JansenSearch for more papers by this author First published: March 1963 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0730.1963.tb00329.xCitations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume18, Issue1-2March 1963Pages 48-53 RelatedInformation

The Fourth Gospel, Ephesus and Alexandria

Professor Goguel in his ‘La Naissance du Christianisme’ and Professor Brandon in his ‘The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church’ have both put forward new hypotheses, which, if accepted, ask for a new orientation on many of the still unsolved questions of Christian origins. Professor Goguel maintains that the direct evidence in our possession for the history of Christian origins is the residue of a process of selection and interpretation of fact performed by early Catholicism in accordance with its own opinions and beliefs as to its origin. Hence, he claims, the most valuable evidence is to be found in what conflicts with its presuppositions. Early Catholicism presumed that it was the product of an original and ideal unity. But it could not be denied, although Acts tries to gloss over the fact, that Paul and the mother church had been divided. Goguel finds evidence that they were so divided that the Christians in Jerusalem tried to suppress Paul and his teaching and at the outset appeared to succeed. The Jerusalem community, he claims, considered Jesus to have become Messiah after his death when God exalted him to the position; their faith lacked all pneumatism; their emphasis was on Jesus as teacher. They regarded themselves as continuing to be members of the Jewish church and salvation as a Jewish prerogative provided those who had consented to Jesus' death repented of their sin.

Unamuno and Pascal: Notes on the Concept of Agony

In 1923, the Parisian Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale invited Miguel de Unamuno to contribute to a special issue then being prepared in commemoration of the tercentenary of the birth of Pascal. Accordingly Unamuno wrote a short essay, “La Foi pascalienne”, seventh and last of the commemorative Etudes sur Pascal, as the volume was entitled. The following year, Unamuno, exiled in Paris, doubled the length of the essay and incorporated it as Chapter ix of his Agonie du christianisme, a book which, like the absorbed essay, had been composed for a French-reading public; for it was a cahier requested by P. L. Couchoud for inclusion in a series of monographs on Christianity. Both the essay and the book were translated into French by Unamuno's close friend, the hispanist Jean Cassou.