Chapter 11

Horse and cattle raising prospers, being carried on chiefly in the west of the department and in the Loire valley. Good butter and cheese are produced. Poultry also is reared, and there is a good deal of bee-keeping. Wheat, oats, buckwheat and potatoes are produced in great abundance; leguminous plants are also largely cultivated, especially near Nantes. Wine, cider and forage crops are the chief remaining agricultural products. The woods are of oak in the interior and pine on the coast. The department has deposits of tin, lead and iron. N.W. of Ancenis coal is obtained from a bed which is a prolongation of that of Anjou. The salt marshes, about 6000 acres in all, occur for the most part between the mouth of the Vilaine and the Loire, and on the Bay of Bourgneuf, and salt-refining, of which Guérande is the centre, is an important industry. The granite of the sea-coast and of the Loire up to Nantes is quarried for large blocks. Steam-engines are built for the government at Indret, a few miles below Nantes; the forges of Basse-Indre are in good repute for the quality of their iron; and the production of the lead-smelting works at Couëron amounts to several millions of francs annually. There are also considerable foundries at Nantes, Chantenay, close to Nantes, and St Nazaire, and shipbuilding yards at Nantes and St Nazaire. Among other industries may be mentioned the preparation of pickles and preserved meats at Nantes, the curing of sardines at Le Croisic and in the neighbouring communes, the manufacture of sugar, brushes, tobacco, macaroni and similar foods, soap and chemicals at Nantes, and of paper, sugar and soap at Chantenay. Fishing is prosecuted along the entire coast, particularly at Le Croisic. Among the seaside resorts Le Croisic, Pornichet and Pornic, where there are megalithic monuments, may be mentioned. The department is traversed by the railways of the state, the Orléans company and the Western company. The department is divided into five arrondissements—Nantes, Ancenis, Châteaubriant, Paimbœuf and St Nazaire—45 cantons and 219 communes. It has its appeal court at Rennes, which is also the centre of theacadémie(educational division) to which it belongs.

The principal places are Nantes, the capital, St Nazaire and Châteaubriant, which receive separate treatment. On the west coast the town of Batz, and the neighbouring villages, situated on the peninsula of Batz, are inhabited by a small community possessed of a distinct costume and dialect, and claiming descent from a Saxon or Scandinavian stock. Its members are employed for the most part in the salt marshes N.E. of the town. Guérande has well-preserved ramparts and gates of the 15th century, a church dating from the 12th to the 16th centuries, and other old buildings. At St Philbert-de-Grandlieu there is a church, rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries, but preserving remains of a previous edifice belonging at least to the beginning of the 11th century.

LOIRET,a department of central France, made up of the three districts of the ancient province of Orléanais—Orléanais proper, Gâtinais and Dunois—together with portions of those of Île-de-France and Berry. It is bounded N. by Seine-et-Oise, N.E. by Seine-et-Marne, E. by Yonne, S. by Nièvre and Cher, S.W. and W. by Loir-et-Cher and N.W. by Eure-et-Loir. Area, 2629 sq. m. Pop. (1906) 364,999. The name is borrowed from the Loiret, a stream which issues from the ground some miles to the south of Orléans, and after a course of about 7 m. falls into the Loire; its large volume gives rise to the belief that it is a subterranean branch of that river. The Loire traverses the south of the department by a broad valley which, though frequently devastated by disastrous floods, is famed for its rich tilled lands, its castles, its towns and its vine-clad slopes. To the north of the Loire are the Gâtinais (capital Montargis) and the Beauce; the former district is so named from itsgâtinesor wildernesses, of which saffron is, along with honey, the most noteworthy product; the Beauce (q.v.), a monotonous tract of corn-fields without either tree or river, has been called the granary of France. Between the Beauce and the Loire is the extensive forest of Orléans, which is slowly disappearing before the advances of agriculture. South of the Loire is the Sologne, long barren and unhealthy from the impermeability of its subsoil, but now much improved in both respects by means of pine plantation and draining and manuring operations. The highest point (on the borders of Cher) is 900 ft. above sea-level, and the lowest (on the borders of Seine-et-Marne) is 220 ft. The watershed on the plateau of Orléans between the basins of the Seine and Loire, which divide Loiret almost equally between them, is almost imperceptible. The lateral canal of the Loire from Roanne stops at Briare; from the latter town a canal (canal de Briare) connects with the Seine by the Loing valley, which is joined by the Orléans canal below Montargis. The only important tributary of the Loire within the department is the Loiret; the Loing, a tributary of the Seine, has a course of 40 m. from south to north, and is accompanied first by the Briare canal and afterwards by that of the Loing. The Essonne, another important affluent of the Seine, leaving Loiret below Malesherbes, takes its rise on the plateau of Orléans, as also does its tributary the Juine. The department has the climate of the Sequanian region, the mean temperature being a little above that of Paris; the rainfall varies from 18.5 to 27.5 in., according to the district, that of the exposed Beauce being lower than that of the well-wooded Sologne. Hailstorms cause much destruction in the Loire valley and the neighbouring regions.

The department is essentially agricultural in character. A large number of sheep, cattle, horses and pigs are reared; poultry, especially geese, and bees are plentiful. The yield of wheat and oats is in excess of the consumption; rye, barley, meslin, potatoes, beetroot, colza and forage plants are also cultivated. Wine in abundance, but of inferior quality, is grown on the hills of the Loire valley. Buckwheat supports bees by its flowers, and poultry by its seeds. Saffron is another source of profit. The woods consist of oak, elm, birch and pine; fruit trees thrive in the department, and Orléans is a great centre of nursery gardens. The industries are brick and tile making, and the manufacture of faience, for which Gien is one of the most important centres in France. The Briare manufacture of porcelain buttons and pearls employs many workmen. Flour-mills are very numerous. There are iron and copper foundries, which, with agricultural implement making, bell-founding and the manufacture of pins, nails and files, represent the chief metal-working industries. The production of hosiery, wool-spinning and various forms of wool manufacture are also engaged in. A large quantity of the wine grown is made into vinegar (vinaigre d’Orléans). The tanneries produce excellent leather; and paper-making, sugar-refining, wax-bleaching and the manufacture of caoutchouc complete the list of industries. The four arrondissements are those of Orléans, Gien, Montargis and Pithiviers, with 31 cantons and 349 communes. The department forms part of theacadémie(educational division) of Paris.

Besides Orléans, the capital, the more noteworthy places, Gien, Montargis, Beaugency, Pithiviers, Briare and St Benoît-sur-Loire, are separately noticed. Outside these towns notable examples of architecture are found in the churches of Cléry (15th century), of Ferrières (13th and 14th centuries), of Puiseaux (12th and 13th centuries) and Meung (12th century). At Germigny-des-Prés there is a church built originally at the beginning of the 9th century and rebuilt in the 19th century, on the old plan and to some extent with the old materials. Yèvre-le-Châtel has an interesting château of the 13th century, and Sully-sur-Loire the fine medieval château rebuilt at the beginning of the 17th century by Maximilien de Béthune, duke of Sully, the famous minister of Henry IV. There are remains of a Gallo-Roman town (perhaps the ancientVellaunodunum) at Triguères and of a Roman amphitheatre near Montbouy.

LOIR-ET-CHER,a department of central France, formed in 1790 from a small portion of Touraine, the Perche, but chiefly from the Dunois, Vendômois and Blésois, portions of Orléanais. It is bounded N. by Eure-et-Loir, N.E. by Loiret, S.E. by Cher, S. by Indre, S.W. by Indre-et-Loire and N.W. by Sarthe. Pop. (1906) 276,019. Area, 2479 sq. m. The department takes its name from the Loir and the Cher by which it is traversed in the north and south respectively. The Loir rises on the eastern border of the Perche and joins the Maine after a course of 195 m.; the Cher rises on the Central Plateau near Aubusson, and reaches the Loire after a course of 219 m. The Loire flows through thedepartment from north-east to south-west, and divides it into two nearly equal portions. To the south-east is the district of the Sologne, to the north-west the rich wheat-growing country of the Beauce (q.v.) which stretches to the Loir. Beyond that river lies the Perche. The surface of this region, which contains the highest altitude in the department (840 ft.), is varied by hills, valleys, hedged fields and orchards. The Sologne was formerly a region of forests, of which those in the neighbourhood of Chambord are the last remains. Its soil, once barren and marshy, has been considerably improved by draining and afforestation, though pools are still very numerous. The district is much frequented by sportsmen. The Cher and Loir traverse pleasant valleys, occasionally bounded by walls of tufa in which dwellings have been excavated, as at Les Roches in the Loir valley; the stone, hardened by exposure to the air, is also used for building purposes. The Loire and, with the help of the Berry canal, the Cher are navigable. The chief remaining rivers of the department are the Beuvron, which flows into the Loire on the left, and the Sauldre, a right-hand affluent of the Cher. The climate is temperate and mild, though that of the Beauce tends to dryness and that of the Sologne to dampness. The mean annual temperature is between 52° and 53° F.

The department is primarily agricultural, yielding abundance of wheat and oats. Besides these the chief products are rye, wheat and potatoes. Vines thrive on the valley slopes, the vineyards falling into four groups—those of the Cher, which yield fine red wines, the Sologne, the Blésois and the Vendômois. In the valleys fruit-trees and nursery gardens are numerous; the asparagus of Romorantin and Vendôme is well-known. The Sologne supplies pine and birch for fuel, and there are extensive forests around Blois and on both sides of the Loir. Pasture is of good quality in the valleys. Sheep are the chief stock; the Perche breed of horses is much sought after for its combination of lightness and strength. Bee-farming is of some importance in the Sologne. Formerly the speciality of Loir-et-Cher was the production of gun-flints. Stone-quarries are numerous. The chief industries are the cloth-manufacture of Romorantin, and leather-dressing and glove-making at Vendôme; and lime-burning, flour-milling, distilling, saw-milling, paper-making and the manufacture of “sabots” and boots and shoes, hosiery and linen goods, are carried on. The department is served chiefly by the Orléans railway.

The arrondissements are those of Blois, Romorantin and Vendôme, with 24 cantons and 297 communes. Loir-et-Cher forms part of the educational division (académie) of Paris. Its court of appeal and the headquarters of the V. army corps, to the regions of which it belongs, are at Orléans. Blois, the capital, Vendôme, Romorantin and Chambord are noticed separately. In addition to those of Blois and Chambord there are numerous fine châteaux in the department, of which that of Montrichard with its donjon of the 11th century, that of Chaumont dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, and that of Cheverny (17th century) in the late Renaissance style are the most important. Those at St Aignan, Lassay, Lavardin and Cellettes may also be mentioned. Churches wholly or in part of Romanesque architecture are found at Faverolles, Selles-sur-Cher, St Aignan and Suèvres. The village of Trôo is built close to ancient tumuli and has an interesting church of the 12th century, and among other remains those of a lazar-house of the Romanesque period. At Pontlevoy are the church, consisting of a fine choir in the Gothic style, and the buildings of a Benedictine abbey. At La Poissonnière (near Montoire) is a small Renaissance manor-house, in which Ronsard was born in 1524.

LOISY, ALFRED FIRMIN(1857- ), French Catholic theologian, was born at Ambrières in French Lorraine of parents who, descended from a long line of resident peasantry, tilled there the soil themselves. The physically delicate boy was put into the ecclesiastical school of St Dizier, without any intention of a clerical career; but he decided for the priesthood, and in 1874 entered the Grand Seminaire of Chalons-sur-Marne. Mgr Meignan, then bishop of Chalons, afterwards cardinal and archbishop of Tours, ordained him priest in 1879. After beingcurésuccessively of two villages in that diocese, Loisy went in May 1881, to study and take a theological degree, to the Institut Catholique in Paris. Here he was influenced, as to biblical languages and textual criticism, by the learned and loyal-minded Abbé Paulin Martin, and as to a vivid consciousness of the true nature, gravity and urgency of the biblical problems and an Attic sense of form by the historical intuition and the mordant irony of Abbé Louis Duchesne. At the governmental institutions, Professors Oppert and Halévy helped further to train him. He took his theological degree in March 1890, by the oral defence of forty Latin scholastic theses and by a French dissertation,Histoire du canon de l’ancien testament, published as his first book in that year.

Professor now at the Institut Catholique, he published successively his lectures:Histoire du canon du N.T.(1891);Histoire critique du texte et des versions de la Bible(1892); andLes Évangiles synoptiques(1893, 1894). The two latter works appeared successively in the bi-monthlyL’Enseignement biblique, a periodical written throughout and published by himself. But already, on the occasion of the death of Ernest Renan, October 1892, the attempts made to clear up the main principles and results of biblical science, first by Mgr d’Hulst, rector of the Institut Catholique, in his article “La Question biblique” (Le Correspondant, Jan. 25th, 1893), and then by Loisy himself, in his paper “La Question biblique et l’inspiration des Écritures” (L’Enseignement biblique, Nov.-Dec. 1893), promptly led to serious trouble. The latter article was immediately followed by Loisy’s dismissal, without further explanation, from the Institut Catholique. And a few days later Pope Leo XIII. published his encyclicalProvidentissimus Deus, which indeed directly condemned not Abbé Loisy’s but Mgr d’Hulst’s position, yet rendered the continued publication of consistently critical work so difficult that Loisy himself suppressed hisEnseignementat the end of 1893. Five further instalments of hisSynoptiqueswere published after this, bringing the work down to the Confession of Peter inclusively.

Loisy next became chaplain to a Dominican convent and girls’ school at Neuilly-sur-Seine (Oct. 1894-Oct. 1899), and here matured his apologetic method, resuming in 1898 the publication of longer articles, under the pseudonyms of Desprès and Firmin in theRevue du clergé français, and of Jacques Simon in the layRevue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses. In the former review, a striking paper upon development of doctrine (Dec. 1st, 1898) headed a series of studies apparently taken from an already extant large apologetic work. In October 1899 he resigned his chaplaincy for reasons of health, and settled at Bellevue, somewhat farther away from Paris. His notable paper, “La Religion d’Israël” (Revue du clergé français, Oct. 15th, 1900), the first of a series intended to correct and replace Renan’s presentation of that great subject, was promptly censured by Cardinal Richard, archbishop of Paris; and though scholarly and zealous ecclesiastics, such as the Jesuit Père Durand and Monseigneur Mignot, archbishop of Albi, defended the general method and several conclusions of the article, the aged cardinal never rested henceforward till he had secured a papal condemnation also. At the end of 1900 Loisy secured a government lectureship at the École des Hautes Études Pratiques, and delivered there in succession courses on the Babylonian myths and the first chapters of Genesis; the Gospel parables; the narrative of the ministry in the synoptic Gospels; and the Passion narratives in the same. The first course was published in theRevue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses; and here also appeared instalments of his commentary on St John’s Gospel, his critically importantNotes sur la Genèse, and aChronique bibliqueunmatched in its mastery of its numberless subjects and its fearless yet delicate penetration.

It was, however, two less erudite little books that brought him a European literary reputation and the culmination of his ecclesiastical troubles.L’Évangile et l’égliseappeared in November 1902 (Eng. trans., 1903). Its introduction and six chapters present with rare lucidity the earliest conceptions of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Son of God, the Church, Christian dogma and Catholic worship; and together form a severely critico-historical yet strongly Catholic answer to Harnack’s still largely pietisticWesen des Christentums. It develops throughout the principles that “what is essential in Jesus’ Gospel is what occupies the first and largest place in His authentic teaching, the ideas forwhich He fought and died, and not only that idea which we may consider to be still a living force to day”; that “it is supremely arbitrary to decree that Christianity must be essentially what the Gospel did not borrow from Judaism, as though what the Gospel owes to Judaism were necessarily of secondary worth”; that “whether we trust or distrust tradition, we know Christ only by means of, athwart and within the Christian tradition”; that “theessence of Christianityresides in the fulness and totality of its life”; and that “the adaptation of the Gospel to the changing conditions of humanity is to-day a more pressing need than ever.” The second edition was enlarged by a preliminary chapter on the sources of the Gospels, and by a third section for the Son of God chapter. The little book promptly aroused widespread interest, some cordial sympathy and much vehement opposition; whilst its large companion theÉtudes évangéliques, containing the course on the parables and four sections of his coming commentary on the Fourth Gospel, passed almost unnoticed. On the 21st of January 1903 Cardinal Richard publicly condemned the book, as not furnished with animprimatur, and as calculated gravely to trouble the faith of the faithful in the fundamental Catholic dogmas. On the 2nd of February Loisy wrote to the archbishop: “I condemn, as a matter of course, all the errors which men have been able to deduce from my book, by placing themselves in interpreting it at a point of view entirely different from that which I had to occupy in composing it.” The pope refused to interfere directly, and the nuncio, Mgr Lorenzelli, failed in securing more than ten public adhesions to the cardinal’s condemnation from among the eighty bishops of France.

Pope Leo had indeed, in a letter to the Franciscan minister-general (November 1898), and in an encyclical to the French clergy (September 1899), vigorously emphasized the traditionalist principles of his encyclicalProvidentissimusof 1893; he had even, much to his prompt regret, signed the unfortunate decree of the Roman Inquisition, January 1897, prohibiting all doubt as to the authenticity of the “Three Heavenly witnesses” passage, 1 John v. 7, a text which, in the wake of a line of scholars from Erasmus downwards, Abbé Paulin Martin had, in 1887, exhaustively shown to be no older than the end of the 4th centuryA.D.Yet in October 1902 he established a “Commission for the Progress of Biblical Studies,” preponderantly composed of seriously critical scholars; and even one month before his death he still refused to sign a condemnation of Loisy’sÉtudes évangéliques.

Cardinal Sarto became Pope Pius X. on the 4th of August 1903. On the 1st of October Loisy published three new books,Autour d’un petit livre,Le Quatrième ÉvangileandLe Discours sur la Montagne.Autourconsists of seven letters, on the origin and aim ofL’Évangile et l’Église; on the biblical question; the criticism of the Gospels; the Divinity of Christ; the Church’s foundation and authority; the origin and authority of dogma, and on the institution of the sacraments. The second and third, addressed respectively to a cardinal (Perraud) and a bishop (Le Camus), are polemical or ironical in tone; the others are all written to friends in a warm, expansive mood; the fourth letter especially, appropriated to Mgr Mignot, attains a grand elevation of thought and depth of mystical conviction.Le Quatrième Évangile, one thousand large pages long, is possibly over-confident in its detailed application of the allegorical method; yet it constitutes a rarely perfect sympathetic reproduction of a great mystical believer’s imperishable intuitions.Le Discours sur la Montagneis a fragment of a coming enlarged commentary on the synoptic Gospels. On the 23rd of December the pope ordered the publication of a decree of the Congregation of the Index, incorporating a decree of the Inquisition, condemning Loisy’sReligion d’Israël,L’Évangile et l’Église,Études évangéliques,Autour d’un petit livreandLe Quatrième Évangile. The pope’s secretary of state had on the 19th December, in a letter to Cardinal Richard, recounted the causes of the condemnation in the identical terms used by the latter himself when condemning theReligion d’Israëlthree years before. On the 12th of January 1904 Loisy wrote to Cardinal Merry del Val that he received the condemnation with respect, and condemned whatever might be reprehensible in his books, whilst reserving the rights of his conscience and his opinions as an historian, opinions doubtless imperfect, as no one was more ready to admit than himself, but which were the only form under which he was able to represent to himself the history of the Bible and of religion. Since the Holy See was not satisfied, Loisy sent three further declarations to Rome; the last, despatched on the 17th of March, was addressed to the pope himself, and remained unanswered. And at the end of March Loisy gave up his lectureship, as he declared, “on his own initiative, in view of the pacification of minds in the Catholic Church.” In the July following he moved into a little house, built for him by his pupil and friend, the Assyriologist François Thureau Dangin, within the latter’s park at Garnay, by Dreux. Here he continued his important reviews, notably in theRevue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses, and publishedMorceaux d’exégèse(1906), six further sections of his synoptic commentary. In April 1907 he returned to his native Lorraine, to Ceffonds by Montier-en-Der, and to his relatives there.

Five recent Roman decisions are doubtless aimed primarily at Loisy’s teaching. The Biblical Commission, soon enlarged so as to swamp the original critical members, and which had become the simple mouthpiece of its presiding cardinals, issued two decrees. The first, on the 27th of June 1906, affirmed, with some significant but unworkable reservations, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; and the second (29th of May 1907) strenuously maintained the Apostolic Zebedean authorship of the fourth Gospel, and the strictly historical character of the events and speeches recorded therein. The Inquisition, by its decreeLamentabili sane(2nd of July 1907), condemned sixty-five propositions concerning the Church’smagisterium; biblical inspiration and interpretation; the synoptic and fourth Gospels; revelation and dogma; Christ’s divinity, human knowledge and resurrection; and the historical origin and growth of the Sacraments, the Church and the Creed. And some forty of these propositions represent, more or less accurately, certain sentences or ideas of Loisy, when torn from their context and their reasons. The encyclicalPascendi Dominici Gregis(Sept. 6th, 1907), probably the longest and most argumentative papal utterance extant, also aims primarily at Loisy, although here the vehemently scholastic redactor’s determination to piece together a strictly coherent, complete a priori system of “Modernism” and his self-imposed restriction to medieval categories of thought as the vehicles for describing essentially modern discoveries and requirements of mind, make the identification of precise authors and passages very difficult. And on the 21st of November 1907 a papalmotu propriodeclared all the decisions of the Biblical Commission, past and future, to be as binding upon the conscience as decrees of the Roman Congregations.

Yet even all this did not deter Loisy from publishing three further books.Les Évangiles synoptiques, two large 8vo volumes of 1009 and 798 pages, appeared “chez l’auteur, à Ceffonds, Montier-en-Der, Haute-Marne,” in January 1908. An incisive introduction discusses the ecclesiastical tradition, modern criticism; the second, the first and the third Gospels; the evangelical tradition; the career and the teaching of Jesus; and the literary form, the tradition of the text and the previous commentaries. The commentary gives also a careful translation of the texts. Loisy recognizes two eye-witness documents, as utilized by all three synoptists, while Matthew and Luke have also incorporated Mark. His chief peculiarity consists in clearly tracing a strong Pauline influence, especially in Mark, which there remodels certain sayings and actions as these were first registered by the eye-witness documents. These doctrinal interpretations introduce the economy of blinding the Jews into the parabolic teaching; the declaration as to the redemptive character of the Passion into the sayings; the sacramental, institutional words into the account of the Last Supper, originally, a solemnly simple Messianic meal; and the formal night-trial before Caiaphas into the original Passion-story with its informal, morningdecision 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 publishedQuelques 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’sAutour 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’sLa Question biblique au XIXesiècle(Paris, 2nd ed., 1902) andLa Question biblique au XXesiècle(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” inLe 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) andÉclaircissementto same (ibid. 1903); P. Lagrange, Mgr P. Batiffol, P. Portalié, S.J., “Autour des fondements de la Foi” in theBulletin de litt. eccl. Toulouse(Paris, December 1903, January 1904), very suggestive papers; Professor Maurice Blondel’s “Histoire et dogma,” inLa 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 theRevue 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 ofLes Évangiles synoptiquesby the Abbé Mangenot, inRevue du Clergé français(Feb. 15, 1908) containing some interesting discriminations; a revue by L. in theRevue 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 theAnnales 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” inAnnales 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), andIl Programma dei Modernisti(ibid.1908), Eng. trans.,The Programme of Modernismed. 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.” inIl Rinnovamento(Milan, 1908, 1909) are candid and circumspect.Germany:Professor E. Troeltsch, “Was heisst Wesen des Christentums?” 6 arts. inDie christliche Welt(Leipzig, autumn 1903), a profound criticism of M. Loisy’s developmental defence of Catholicism; Professor Harnack’s review ofL’Évangile et l’Églisein theTheol. Literatur-Zeitung(Leipzig, 23rd January 1904) is generous and interesting; Professor H. J. Holtzmann’s “Urchristentum u. Reform-Katholizismus,” in theProt. Monatshefte, vii. 5 (Berlin, 1903), “Der Fall Loisy,” ibid. ix. 1, and his review of “Les Évangiles synoptiques” inDas 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’sHarnack 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 Supplementfor January 15th, 22nd, 29th, 1904), and “The Synoptic Gospels” (review inThe 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 theHibbert Journal, vol. i. (1903) p. 603, is the work of a Puritan-minded, cultured Broad Church layman.

(F. v. H.)

LOJA(formerly writtenLoxa), 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 ancientIlipula, or with theLacibi(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.

LOKOJA,a town of Nigeria, at the junction of the Niger and Benue rivers, founded in 1860 by the British consul, W. B. Baikie, and subsequently the military centre of the Royal Niger Company. It is in the province of Kabba, 250 m. from the mouth of the Niger, and is of considerable commercial importance (seeNigeriaandKabba).

LOLLARDS,the name given to the English followers of John Wycliffe; they were the adherents of a religious movement which was widespread in the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, and to some extent maintained itself on to the Reformation. The name is of uncertain origin; some derive it fromlolium, tares, quoting Chaucer (C.T., Shipman’s Prologue):—

“This Loller heer wil prechen us somwhat ...He wolde sowen som difficulteeOr springen cokkel in our clene corn”;

“This Loller heer wil prechen us somwhat ...

He wolde sowen som difficultee

Or springen cokkel in our clene corn”;

but the most generally received explanation derives the words fromlollenorlullen, to sing softly. The word is much older than its English use; there were Lollards in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 14th century, who were akin to the Fratricelli, Beghards and other sectaries of the recusant Franciscan type. The earliest official use of the name in England occurs in 1387 in a mandate of the bishop of Worcester against five “poor preachers,”nomine seu ritu Lollardorum confoederatos. It is probable that the name was given to the followers of Wycliffe because they resembled those offshoots from the great Franciscan movement which had disowned the pope’s authority and set before themselves the ideal ofEvangelical poverty.

The 14th century, so full of varied religious life, made it manifest that the two different ideas of a life of separation from the world which in earlier times had lived on side by side within the medieval church were irreconcilable. The church chose to abide by the idea of Hildebrand and to reject that of Francis of Assisi; and the revolt of Ockham and the Franciscans, of the Beghards and other spiritual fraternities, of Wycliffe and the Lollards, were all protests against that decision. Gradually there came to be facing each other a great political Christendom, whose rulers were statesmen, with aims and policy of a worldly type, and a religious Christendom, full of the ideas of separation from the world by self-sacrifice and of participation in the benefits of Christ’s work by an ascetic imitation. The war between the two ideals was fought out in almost every country in Europe in the 14th century. In England Wycliffe’s whole life was spent in the struggle, and he bequeathed his work to the Lollards. The main practical thought with Wycliffe was that the church, if true to her divine mission, must aid men to live that life of evangelical poverty by which they could be separate from the world and imitate Christ, and if the church ceased to be true to her mission she ceased to be a church. Wycliffe was a metaphysician and a theologian, and had to invent a metaphysical theory—the theory ofDominium—to enable him to transfer, in a way satisfactory to himself, the powers and privileges of the church to his company of poor Christians; but his followers were content to allege that a church which held large landed possessions, collected tithes greedily and took money from starving peasants for baptizing, burying and praying, could not be the church of Christ and his apostles.

Lollardy was most flourishing and most dangerous to the ecclesiastical organization of England during the ten years after Wycliffe’s death. It had spread so rapidly and grown so popular that a hostile chronicler could say that almost every second man was a Lollard. Wycliffe left three intimate disciples:—Nicolas Hereford, a doctor of theology of Oxford, who had helped his master to translate the Bible into English; John Ashton, also a fellow of an Oxford college; and John Purvey, Wycliffe’s colleague at Lutterworth, and a co-translator of the Bible, with these were associated more or less intimately, in the first age of Lollardy, John Parker, the strange ascetic William Smith, the restless fanatic Swynderly, Richard Waytstract and Crompe. Wycliffe had organized in Lutterworth an association for sending the gospel through all England, a company of poor preachers somewhat after the Wesleyan method of modern times. “To be poor without mendicancy, to unite the flexible unity, the swift obedience of an order, with free and constant mingling among the poor, such was the ideal of Wycliffe’s ‘poor priests’” (cf. Shirley,Fasc. Ziz.p. xl.), and, although proscribed, these “poor preachers” with portions of their master’s translation of the Bible in their hand to guide them, preached all over England. In 1382, two years before the death of Wycliffe, the archbishop of Canterbury got the Lollard opinions condemned by convocation, and, having been promised royal support, he began the long conflict of the church with the followers of Wycliffe. He was able to coerce the authorities of the university of Oxford, and to drive out of it the leading Wycliffite teachers, but he was unable to stifle Oxford sympathies or to prevent the banished teachers preaching throughout the country. Many of the nobles, like Lords Montacute and Salisbury, supported the poor preachers, took them as private chaplains, and protected them against clerical interference. Country gentlemen like Sir Thomas Latimer of Braybrooke and Sir Richard Stury protected them, while merchants and burgesses supported them with money. When Richard II. issued an ordinance (July 1382) ordering every bishop to arrest all Lollards, the Commons compelled him to withdraw it. Thus protected, the “poor preachers” won masses of the people to their opinions, and Leicester, London and the west of England became their headquarters.

The organization must have been strong in numbers, but only those who were seized for heresy are known by name, and it is only from the indictments of their accusers that their opinions can be gathered. The preachers were picturesque figures in long russet dress down to the heels, who, staff in hand, preached in the mother tongue to the people in churches and graveyards, in squares, streets and houses, in gardens and pleasure grounds, and then talked privately with those who had been impressed. The Lollard literature was very widely circulated—books by Wycliffe and Hereford and tracts and broadsides—in spite of many edicts proscribing it. In 1395 the Lollards grew so strong that they petitioned parliament through Sir Thomas Latimer and Sir R. Stury to reform the church on Lollardist methods. It is said that the Lollard Conclusions printed by Canon Shirley (p. 360) contain the substance of this petition. If so, parliament was told that temporal possessions ruin the church and drive out the Christian graces of faith, hope and charity; that the priesthood of the church in communion with Rome was not the priesthood Christ gave to his apostles; that the monk’s vow of celibacy had for its consequence unnatural lust, and should not be imposed; that transubstantiation was a feigned miracle, and led people to idolatry; that prayers made over wine, bread, water, oil, salt, wax, incense, altars of stone, church walls, vestments, mitres, crosses, staves, were magical and should not be allowed; that kings should possess thejus episcopale, and bring good government into the church; that no special prayers should be made for the dead; that auricular confession made to the clergy, and declared to be necessary for salvation, was the root of clerical arrogance and the cause of indulgences and other abuses in pardoning sin; that all wars were against the principles of the New Testament, and were but murdering and plundering the poor to win glory for kings; that the vows of chastity laid upon nuns led to child murder; that many of the trades practised in the commonwealth, such as those of goldsmiths and armourers, were unnecessary and led to luxury and waste. These Conclusions really contain the sum of Wycliffite teaching; and, if we add that the principal duty of priests is to preach, and that the worship of images, the going on pilgrimages and the use of gold and silver chalices in divine service are sinful (The Peasants’ Rising and the Lollards, p. 47), they include almost all the heresies charged in the indictments against individual Lollards down to the middle of the 15th century. The king, who had hitherto seemed anxious to repress the action of the clergy against the Lollards, spoke strongly against the petition and its promoters, and Lollardy never again had the power in England which it wielded up to this year.

If the formal statements of Lollard creed are to be got from these Conclusions, the popular view of their controversy withthe church may be gathered from the ballads preserved in thePolitical Poems and Songs relating to English History, published in 1859 by Thomas Wright for the Master of the Rolls series, and in the Piers Ploughman poems.Piers Ploughman’s Creed(seeLangland) was probably written about 1394, when Lollardy was at its greatest strength; the ploughman of theCreedis a man gifted with sense enough to see through the tricks of the friars, and with such religious knowledge as can be got from the creed, and from Wycliffe’s version of the Gospels. The poet gives us a “portrait of the fat friar with his double chin shaking about as big as a goose’s egg, and the ploughman with his hood full of holes, his mittens made of patches, and his poor wife going barefoot on the ice so that her blood followed” (Early English Text Society, vol. xxx., pref., p. 16); and one can easily see why farmers and peasants turned from the friars to the poor preachers. ThePloughman’s Complainttells the same tale. It paints popes, cardinals, prelates, rectors, monks and friars, who call themselves followers of Peter and keepers of the gates of heaven and hell, and pale poverty-stricken people, cotless and landless, who have to pay the fat clergy for spiritual assistance, and asks if these are Peter’s priests. “I trowe Peter took no money, for no sinners that he sold.... Peter was never so great a fole, to leave his key with such a losell.”

In 1399 the Lancastrian Henry IV. overthrew the Plantagenet Richard II., and one of the most active partisans of the new monarch was Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and the most determined opponent of Lollardy. Richard II. had aided the clergy to suppress Lollardy without much success. The new dynasty supported the church in a similar way and not more successfully. The strength of the anti-clerical party lay in the House of Commons, in which the representatives of the shires took the leading part. Twice the Commons petitioned the crown to seize the temporalities of the church and apply them to such national purposes as relief of taxation, maintenance of the poor and the support of new lords and knights. Their anti-clerical policy was not continuous, however. The court party and the clergy proposed statutes for the suppression of heresy, and twice at least secured the concurrence of the Commons. One of these was the well-known statuteDe heretico comburendopassed in 1401.

In the earlier stages of Lollardy, when the court and the clergy managed to bring Lollards before ecclesiastical tribunals backed by the civil power, the accused generally recanted and showed no disposition to endure martyrdom for their opinions. They became bolder in the beginning of the 15th century, William Sawtrey (Chartris), caught and condemned, refused to recant and was burnt at St Paul’s Cross (March 1401), and other martyrdoms followed. The victims usually belonged to the lower classes. In 1410 John Badby, an artisan, was sent to the stake. His execution was memorable from the part taken in it by the prince of Wales, who himself tried to reason the Lollard out of his convictions. But nothing said would make Badby confess that “Christ sitting at supper did give to His disciples His living body to eat.” The Lollards, far from daunted, abated no effort to make good their ground, and united a struggle for social and political liberty to the hatred felt by the peasants towards the Romish clergy. Jak Upland (John Countryman) took the place of Piers Ploughman, and upbraided the clergy, and especially the friars, for their wealth and luxury. Wycliffe had published the rule of St Francis, and had pointed out in a commentary upon the rule how far friars had departed from the maxims of their founder, and had persecuted theSpirituales(the Fratricelli, Beghards, Lollards of the Netherlands) for keeping them to the letter (cf. Matthews,English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted, Early Eng. Text Soc., vol. lxxiv., 1880). Jak Upland put all this into rude nervous English verse:

“Freer, what charitie is thisTo fain that whoso liveth after your orderLiveth most perfectlie,And next followeth the state of the ApostlesIn povertie and pennance:And yet the wisest and greatest clerkes of youWend or send or procure to the court of Rome,... and to be assoiled of the vow of povertie.”

“Freer, what charitie is this

To fain that whoso liveth after your order

Liveth most perfectlie,

And next followeth the state of the Apostles

In povertie and pennance:

And yet the wisest and greatest clerkes of you

Wend or send or procure to the court of Rome,

... and to be assoiled of the vow of povertie.”

The archbishop, having the power of the throne behind him, attacked that stronghold of Lollardy the university of Oxford. In 1406 a document appeared purporting to be the testimony of the university in favour of Wycliffe; its genuineness was disputed at the time, and when quoted by Huss at the council of Constance it was repudiated by the English delegates. The archbishop treated Oxford as if it had issued the document, and procured the issue of severe regulations in order to purge the university of heresy. In 1408 Arundel in convocation proposed and carried the famousConstitutiones Thomae Arundelintended to put down Wycliffite preachers and teaching. They provided amongst other things that no one was to be allowed to preach without a bishop’s licence, that preachers preaching to the laity were not to rebuke the sins of the clergy, and that Lollard books and the translation of the Bible were to be searched for and destroyed.

When Henry V. became king a more determined effort was made to crush Lollardy. Hitherto its strength had lain among the country gentlemen who were the representatives of the shires. The court and clergy had been afraid to attack this powerful class. The new king determined to overawe them, and to this end selected one who had been a personal friend and whose life had been blameless. This was Sir John Oldcastle, in right of his wife, Lord Cobham, “the good Lord Cobham” as the common people called him. Henry first tried personal persuasion, and when that failed directed trial for heresy. Oldcastle was convicted, but was imprisoned for forty days in the Tower in hope that he might recant. He escaped, and summoned his co-religionists to his aid. A Lollard plot was formed to seize the king’s person. In the end Oldcastle was burnt for an obstinate heretic (Dec. 1417). These persecutions were not greatly protested against; the wars of Henry V. with France had awakened the martial spirit of the nation, and little sympathy was felt for men who had declared that all war was but the murder and plundering of poor people for the sake of kings. Mocking ballads were composed upon the martyr Oldcastle, and this dislike to warfare was one of the chief accusations made against him (comp. Wright’sPolitical Poems, ii. 244). But Arundel could not prevent the writing and distribution of Lollard books and pamphlets. Two appeared about the time of the martyrdom of Oldcastle—The Ploughman’s Prayerand theLanthorne of Light.The Ploughman’s Prayerdeclared that true worship consists in three things—in loving God, and dreading God and trusting in God above all other things; and it showed how Lollards, pressed by persecution, became further separated from the religious life of the church. “Men maketh now great stonen houses full of glasen windows, and clepeth thilke thine houses and churches. And they setten in these houses mawmets of stocks and stones, to fore them they knelen privilich and apert and maken their prayers, and all this they say is they worship.... For Lorde our belief is that thine house is man’s soul.” Notwithstanding the repression, Lollardy fastened in new parts of England, and Lollards abounded in Somerset, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Lincoln and Buckinghamshire.

The council of Constance (1414-1418) put an end to the papal schism, and also showed its determination to put down heresy by burning John Huss. When news of this reached England the clergy were incited to still more vigorous proceedings against Lollard preachers and books. From this time Lollardy appears banished from the fields and streets, and takes refuge in houses and places of concealment. There was no more wayside preaching, but instead there wereconventicula occultain houses, in peasants’ huts, in sawpits and in field ditches, where the Bible was read and exhortations were given, and so Lollardy continued. In 1428 Archbishop Chichele confessed that the Lollards seemed as numerous as ever, and that their literary and preaching work went on as vigorously as before. It was found also that many of the poorer rectors and parish priests, and a great many chaplains and curates, were in secret association with the Lollards, so much so that in many places processions were never made and worship on saints’ days was abandoned. For the Lollards were hardened by persecution, and became fanaticalin the statement of their doctrines. Thomas Bagley was accused of declaring that if in the sacrament a priest made bread into God, he made a God that can be eaten by rats and mice; that the pharisees of the day, the monks, and the nuns, and the friars and all other privileged persons recognized by the church were limbs of Satan; and that auricular confession to the priest was the will not of God but of the devil. And others held that any priest who took salary was excommunicate; and that boys could bless the bread as well as priests.

From England Lollardy passed into Scotland. Oxford infected St Andrews, and we find traces of more than one vigorous search made for Lollards among the teaching staff of the Scottish university, while the Lollards of Kyle in Ayrshire were claimed by Knox as the forerunners of the Scotch Reformation.

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