Marie-Joseph Lagrange (born Albert Marie-Henri Lagrange; 7 March 1855 – 10 March 1938) was a Dominican priest and founder of the

École Biblique École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, commonly known as École Biblique, is a French academic establishment in Jerusalem specializing in archaeology and Biblical exegesis. It is housed by the Saint-Étienne priory. Associate ...

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. His cause for

beatification Beatification (from Latin , "blessed" and , "to make") is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their name. ''Beati'' is the p ...

has been initiated in 1991.

Life

Albert Marie-Henri Lagrange was born 7 March 1855, in Bourg-en-Bresse, France. At the age of three, he received a blessing from the Curé d’Ars. At the junior Seminary of Autun, he studied languages: Greek, German, English, and Italian. He studied law at Paris, obtaining a Doctorate in 1878; and he was admitted to practice.John Vianney Becker OP, ''Pere LaGrange'' in ''Dominicana''
/ref> In 1878 he entered the Dominican seminary at Issy-les-Moulineaux, and from there went to the novitiate at St Maximin in Toulouse, where he received the habit and was given the name Brother Marie-Joseph. In 1880, the Dominicans were expelled from France. Lagrange went to the Spanish Dominican house of St. Stephen in Salamanca. He was ordained a priest at Zamora in 1883."Our Founder",, École biblique et archéologique française de Jerusalem
/ref> Lagrange was a professor of Church history and Holy Scripture when he was sent to Vienna to improve his knowledge of Oriental languages: Assyrian, Egyptian, Arabic, and Hebrew. He also studied Rabbinical literature. In February 1889, he was sent to Jerusalem, where in November 1890 he opened the École Pratique d’Études Bibliques (Practical School of Biblical Studies). In 1892, he founded the ''Revue biblique''. While some contemporaries criticized the new scientific and critical approach to the Bible, Lagrange made use of it. A scholar of wide-ranging interests, he was the author of ''Critique textuelle; II, La critique rationnelle'' (Paris, 1936), an influential handbook of textual theory and method as related to the

textual criticism Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may rang ...

of the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

. He was made a Master of Sacred Theology in 1901. Lagrange's first article in the ''Revue biblique'' regarding the likely location of the city of David caused some criticism; even more was generated by '"The Sources of the Pentateuch", a reexamination of Moses' part in the composition of the first five books of the Bible. But Pope Leo was not inclined to discourage new ideas. Lagrange adhered to the 1893 encyclical '' Providentissimus Deus'' of

Pope Leo XIII Pope Leo XIII (; born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 2March 181020July 1903) was head of the Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 until his death in July 1903. He had the fourth-longest reign of any pope, behind those of Peter the Ap ...

regarding biblical research, and as long as Pope Leo was alive, his work quietly progressed. But after Leo's death, an ultra-conservative reaction set in. Père Lagrange, like other scholars involved in the 19th-century renaissance of biblical studies, was suspected of being a

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

. The historical-critical method was considered suspect by the Vatican. His 1904 book, ''The Historical Method'', drew criticism. In 1905, the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued a caution about two of his methodological principles. In 1908 he petitioned the Master General for permission to withdraw from Scripture studies. Fr. Cormier, the General at the time, refused and told him to focus instead on the New Testament. In 1912 Lagrange was given an order of silence for the ''Revue Biblique'' to cease publication and to return to France. The École itself was closed for a year, and then Lagrange was sent back to Jerusalem to continue his work. His best known work is ''L’Évangile de Jésus Christ''. Lagrange spent forty-five years in Jerusalem. In 1935 he returned to France permanently for reasons of health,"Biography", Marie-Joseph LaGrange
/ref> and died on 10 March 1938 at the age of eighty-four. In 1967, his remains were returned to Jerusalem for burial in the choir of the Basilica of St-Étienne, next to the École Biblique.

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External links

* ttp://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9046838/Marie-Joseph-Lagrange Marie-Joseph Lagrangeon the

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lagrange, Marie-Joseph 1855 births 1938 deaths French Dominicans French biblical scholars Roman Catholic biblical scholars New Testament scholars People from Bourg-en-Bresse 20th-century French Catholic theologians École Biblique French Servants of God

Life

Works

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Further reading

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