The French theologian and biblical historian Alfred Firmin Loisy (1857-1940) was one of the leaders of the modernist movement in the Catholic Church.

Alfred Loisy was born to a peasant family at Ambrières, a village east of Paris, on Feb. 28, 1857. His vocation for the priesthood appears to have begun early, and in 1874, without having completed his secondary school education, he entered the seminary at Châlons-sur-Marne. "I was shocked by the vulgarity that reigned there," Loisy wrote 10 years later. Disturbed by the contrast between the faith of his peasant childhood and the textbook rationalism he was taught at the seminary, he began to study Hebrew on his own and soon found in philology the serenity of which orthodox theology had deprived him. In 1879, despite his scruples over his faith, he became a priest.

In 1878 Loisy made the acquaintance of the historian Louis Duchesne at the...