PINARD DE LA BOULLAYE, HENRI (1874–1958), was a French Jesuit theologian, preacher, and writer on theology, comparative religion, and the spirituality of Ignatius Loyola. Born in Paris in 1874, Pinard entered the Society of Jesus in 1893. He was subsequently appointed professor of theology at a Jesuit institution in Enghien, Belgium, a position that he held from 1910 to 1927. During his professorship at Enghien he became interested in the study of comparative religion. He introduced a course in the history of religions that he later offered at the Gregorian University in Rome, where he lectured from 1927 to 1934.

Earlier, in 1913, Pinard had printed privately for the use of his students a manual entitled De vera religione. In this work he endorsed the theory of a primitive monotheism (Urmonotheismus) proposed by the priest-ethnologist Wilhelm Schmidt, and the theory of cultural cycles of Fritz Graebner, also an...