Saint Pius X: Biblical Studies

The Angelus ^ | January 2004 | Dominique Viain

[AskStPhilomena]

When Giuseppe Sarto was elected pope on August 4, 1903, the crisis that was shaking the world of Biblical exegesis, albeit limited to a small number of savants, was nonetheless to have far-reaching consequences for the universal Church. In fact, the Biblical question is intimately tied to the modernist crisis, as the case of Alfred Loisy bears witness.

Clearly, Biblical modernism did not appear out of nowhere. It was the product of a long intellectual evolution that, over the course of the 19th century, united and melded two apparently antinomic currents of thought. On the one hand we find the rationalist current, with its origins in the Enlightenment and German philosophy, denying the supernatural both in the Bible and in human history, and glorifying on the contrary man's advances in scientific knowledge, advances that, sure enough, quickly reduced Biblical revelation to the rank of fairy stories for children...or rather for adults; on the other hand, there was the current of romanticism, which established the primacy of the heart over the intellect; the subject and his consciousness over the objective reality of the world, and effectively replaced the faith with "religious sentiment."

The union of these two currents of thought creates a system distinct from its two sources. Unlike the followers of Voltaire, a modernist claims to defend "faith" in the divine word. Better yet, he claims to engage in apologetics as he breaks with that naivete that accepts the miraculous in Holy Scripture, and instead proposes scientifically acceptable explanations. Already, in 1863, Ernest Kenan's Life of Jesus called out for this respectful and benevolent union of contraries and created the scandal of a certain pre-modernism.

It would therefore seem that one of the immediate causes of the modernist crisis in the Church was a sort of Catholic inferiority complex faced with the rising tide of archeological discoveries; a certain shame in maintaining the inviolable doctrine of inerrability, not only touching faith and morals but also in the historic or scientific domain, while unbelieving researchers aggressively affirmed their discovery of multiple contradictions between archeology and Holy Scripture. A first sort of modernism, full of good intentions, became something of a fall-back position for intellectuals and cultivated men, prepared to reach an understanding on the general teachings of Revelation, by way of symbols, images, and the immanent word. Anything rather than simply professing that God had spoken to man!

Obviously, no one denies the reality of scientific progress nor the intellectual shock produced by the staggering archeological and philological discoveries of the 19th century.

Ever since Champollion and the Egyptian campaign, a vanished universe had suddenly begun to rise from its grave with every new archeological dig: in Mesopotamia and in Palestine civilizations came to light that had been contemporaries of the epic of the Hebrew people, civilizations that until then had been known only through Biblical allusions.

Modern philology discovered new languages and new collections of texts as old as the Bible, sometimes much older. The Biblical account found an echo-or a rival, according to the positivists-in other accounts.

The understanding of the mechanisms by which texts are transmitted, and of written tradition; the discoveries of papyrology and epigraphy, all made enormous progress; some are troubled by the question of the letter itself of the Biblical text and its conformity to an original.

Unfortunately, these objective discoveries were taken in hand by a philosophy of subjectivism, essentially Kantian, and were integrated into a system of agnostic interpretation, based on preconceptions and the rejection of tradition. Such are the documentary hypotheses of Wellhausen, the axiomatic belief in the popular "creation" of texts by oral tradition, etc. Moreover, the Bible was not the only target of this theory, since all the great texts of antiquity were caught up in the same destructive whirlwind: the works of Homer and the Song of Roland became, alongside the Pentateuch, the product of a collective creation built around a primitive element laboriously isolated by the genius of modern researchers!

Little by little, the cultivated elite adopted the more or less explicit conviction that modern science is opposed to Revelation and that in any case, where there is a dispute, the Bible is automatically wrong!

St. Pius X, in the line of Leo XIII and his great Biblical encyclical Providentissimus Deus (Nov. 18, 1893), was to respond to these methodological and doctrinal deviations, and reaffirm Biblical inerrancy as well as the harmony between the divine Word and the established truths of human science.

To do this, he was simultaneously to make use of defensive means (condemnations, titles placed on the Index) and offensive means (the creation of Institutes, directives for the formation of exegetes). These are the two themes that we will pursue in this overview of the Biblical question under St. Pius X.

MODERNISM

The Works of Loisy Placed on the Index To follow the chronological order of events— which in our opinion reveals the patience and the pedagogy of Rome in this affair—the first measure taken against modernism was the placing on the Index of the five works of Alfred Loisy on Dec. 23, 1903.

This is not the place for a full description of the personality of the man and the scholar. Let it suffice to point out that, as a professor of exegesis at the Catholic Institute of Paris, he and several others represented great hopes of a renewal of the intelligence and of Catholic science in France at the end of a very positivist 19th century.

With the creation of the Catholic universities, the renewal of Benedictine studies, the restoration of Thomism, the foundation of the future Biblical School of Jerusalem, the names of Duchesne, Battifol, Lagrange, and Loisy became the pride of the French Church, at least for a time. However, very rapidly, several of them began to be worrisome for the authorities, more in reason of their doctrinal "state of mind" than of their explicitly professed doctrines. Loisy in particular saw himself deprived of his teaching chair at the Catholic Institute of Paris after the publication of Providentissimus Deus: his teaching was dangerously far from that of the Supreme Pontiff. He continued his researches during this forced retreat and in November 1902 published The Gospel and The Church, which contains the famous phrase "Jesus announced the Kingdom, and what we got was the Church." The work was presented as apologetic, in the service of an evolving Church that finally recognizes that dogmas themselves evolve and respond—or ought to respond-to the needs of believers throughout a changing history, etc.

The book was a bombshell. Loisy-attacked or supported from all sides-answered his detractors the following year by publishing About a Little Book (Oct. 1903) in which he persists in his claims and stands behind what he had written, with an offensive sarcasm, insisting on the symbolism of the Gospels ("Christ is God for the faith"), and immanence ("Revelation was nothing other than the consciousness acquired by man of his relation to God").

When the condemnation to the Index was pronounced, it was in fact an entire exegetical school-not to say an exegetical mafia-that was targeted in the person of Loisy; his friends were quite aware of the fact and were to launch a campaign, throughout Europe, in his defense, presenting all the signs of that "solidarity" of which the present age has since given us innumerable examples. Nevertheless, Rome has spoken and henceforth no doctrinal doubt was possible.

The Decree Lamentabili Sane Exitu After four years of labor and patience appeared the first systematization of modernist doctrine. With the decree Lamentabili Sane Exitu of July 3 and 4, 1907 (final drafting July 3, signed July 4), 65 propositions were solemnly condemned, of which about 40 touch directly on Biblical questions. A large number of these propositions are pure and simple transcriptions of Loisy's works, from which they were extracted by Frs. Letourneau and Bouvier, theologians from Paris, who had submitted all 33 of them to Cardinal Richard. Modernism, in its most acute form, is indeed a French disease! Frenchmen were to be its first doctors.

The following gives an idea of the type of propositions condemned by the decree:

IX. They who believe that God is really the Author of Holy Scripture give evidence of excessive simplicity or of ignorance.

XI. If the exegete wishes to undertake Biblical studies of any utility, he must first set aside any preconceived notion of the supernatural origin of Holy Scripture and must not interpret the latter any differently than other human documents.

XVI. The accounts of John are not properly speaking historical, but are a mystical contemplation of the Gospel; the discourses contained in his Gospel are theological meditations on the mystery of salvation, devoid of any historical truth.

XX. Revelation was nothing other than the consciousness acquired by man of the relation that exists between God and himself.

XXIII. Between the facts recounted in Holy Scripture and the dogmas of the Church to which the former serve as a foundation, there could exist, and there really does exist, an opposition, such that Biblical criticism could reject as false certain facts that the Church holds to be true.

XXVII. The Gospels do not prove the divinity of Jesus Christ; rather it is a dogma that the Christian consciousness has deducted from the notion of a Messiah.

XXXVI. The resurrection of the Savior is not properly speaking an historical fact but a purely supernatural fact, one which is neither proven nor able to be proved, and which the Christian consciousness has little by little deducted from other facts.

LIX. Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrines, applicable to all times and to all men, but rather inaugurated a certain religious movement adapted—or which ought to be adapted—to the diversity of times and places.

The Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis However, the great theological work against modernism only appeared two months later, once the groundwork had been laid. There is much we could say about this huge encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, of September 8, 1907, not only because of its philosophical and theological profundity, but even because of its literary qualities: irony, false naivete, indignation, caustic humor in the analysis of the modernist psychology, avenging faithful Catholics for the thousand insolent remarks they had suffered from these masters of exegesis!

If the encyclical is not consecrated first and foremost to Biblical questions, it broaches them often and inevitably, since the modernist "faith" founds a new conception of Revelation and then builds on this foundation to explain the origin of dogmas and their later "evolution." Thus the principal points underlined by St. Pius X are the following: agnosticism, immanence, and evolutionism.

Agnosticism The modernist exegesis begins as an agnostic: it denies a priori that God could reveal Himself to humanity and make Himself known in an extrinsic and explicit way. The "word of God" can only be a manner of speaking; human reality excludes all untimely intrusion of the divine:

God, and all intervention of God in human affairs, ought to be referred to the faith, with which they are exclusively concerned. If there appears a case in which divine and human are confused—Jesus Christ, for example, or the Church and the sacraments—it will be necessary to split apart this composite and dissociate the two elements: the human will remain in the domain of the historical, the divine will be referred to the faith.

Immanence Once Revelation ceases to be the very word of God passed down to men by the intermediary of the inspired writers, it becomes the immanent expression of a certain interior experience-common, moreover, to all religions: The books of the Bible "are collections of lived experiences within a given religion, not at all vulgar experiences accessible to all, but extraordinary and rare." "It is God Who speaks in these Books, through the believer, but, according to modernist theology, by way of immanence and vital permanence." "The inspiration does not differ, except in its intensity, from the need that every believer feels to communicate his faith, in writing or by the spoken word. We find something like it in poetic inspiration...."

Evolutionism As for this immanent faith, its point of departure is Biblical Revelation and it develops throughout the ages according to the needs of the believing soul; textual criticism can attest to such an evolutionary construction of the Holy Text, a sort of disparate mosaic somehow elaborated by various "believers" in the history of the Hebrew people or the primitive Church.

They do not hesitate to affirm openly that the books in question, especially the Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, were slowly formed by various additions to a very brief primitive account: interpolations in the form of theological or allegorical interpretations, or simple transitions and efforts to stitch together parts of the text.

As the encyclical progresses, it presents an admirable evocation of the complex, paradoxical image of the modernist savant, a veritable schizophrenic personality, forever dissociating the object of faith from the object of science in his studies—never denying the supernatural or a given dogma, but always creating a separate category of natural reality, just as true as supernatural reality but within a different order. "Thus when asked if Jesus Christ truly performed miracles and uttered veritable prophecies; if He was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven: no, answers agnostic science; yes, answers the faith."

The Excommunication of Alfred Loisy Five years had gone by since the works of the French exegete were placed on the Index; five years during which Rome hoped in vain for a retraction on the part of the Biblical scholar.

The priest Alfred Loisy, presently living in the diocese of Langres, has taught orally and often published theories that undermine the principle foundations of the Christian faith; this fact is already universally known.

Nonetheless, we remained hopeful that, drawn to such theories perhaps by the love of novelty rather than driven by a certain perversity of mind, he would conform himself to the recent declarations and prescriptions of the Holy See in this matter; and that is why we have not sooner had recourse to the most serious canonical sanctions. But the contrary has proved true; with a universal disdain, not only has he refused to renounce his errors, he has not feared to reaffirm them with obstinacy in new writings and in letters to his superiors.

With this in mind, the following remark by Fr. Dubarle, the famous exegete, becomes very enlightening:

In wishing to resolve by the force of her authority the problems raised during the time of modernism, the Church has deprived herself of the mercy of history, which gave rise, 50 years before its time, and within limited circles, to what would one day be the questions of the majority.

As if the questions posed by "the majority" had not been instilled insidiously and at length by those "limited circles," condemned and secretly in revolt during those "50 years"! In a word, Loisy was persecuted as a prophet! Such is the admission of his contemporary biographers, by the way, who do not hesitate to say that Vatican II was the rehabilitation of Loisy.

In contrast to that improbable "mercy of history," I would hold up the authentic mercy of St. Pius X, when he recommended to the new bishop of Chalons, the diocese of Loisy: "You are going to be Fr. Loisy's bishop. When the occasion presents itself, treat him with kindness: and if he makes one step toward you, make two toward him." (Loisy, Memoires pour servir a I'histoire religieuse de notre temps, vol. Ill, Paris, 1931, p.27)

ANTI-MODERNIST OATHS It was this authentic charity of St. Pius X that finally led him, in the name of the defense of the faith, to promulgate the two "anti-modernist" oaths to be sworn by whomever was to undertake the various functions of the priesthood.

First came the oath to be sworn by doctors of Holy Scripture (the motu proprio Illibatae Custodiendae, June 29, 1910):

I, TV., submit with all desired respect and sincerely attach myself to all the decisions, declarations and prescriptions of the Apostolic See or the Roman Pontiffs concerning Holy Scripture and the correct method for their interpretation. [There follows the list of Roman documents.]

That is why I promise to observe faithfully, integrally and sincerely; to preserve inviolable, and never to attack in my teaching or in any other way, by my words or my writing, the principles and decrees put forth or that will be put forth by the Apostolic See and the Pontifical Biblical Commission, law and supreme rule of study.

Next came the anti-modernist oath properly speaking (the motu proprio Sacrorum Antistitum, Sept. 1, 1910), to be taken by clerics when they enter the major orders, become professors in religious institutes, or exercise diverse priestly functions.

The text, which is about 100 lines, contains, in addition to a Catholic profession of faith, several clauses specifically reserved to Biblical doctrine:

I admit and I recognize the external arguments in favor of Revelation, that is to say the divine actions, first among them miracles and prophecies, as very certain marks of the divine origin of the Christian religion....

I recognize that the Church was founded by "Christ in person, true and historical."...

I also reprove the error of those who claim that the faith proposed by the Church can be in contradiction with history....

"Whosoever, in one way or another, shows himself to be imbued with modernism, will be excluded, without mercy, from the charge of director or professor; if he already occupies such a charge he will be removed from it; ...the same applies to anyone who betrays a love of novelty in the matters of history, archeology or Biblical exegesis."

Pope St. Pius X, Sacrum Antistum

I also condemn and reject the opinion of those who would divide the personality of the Christian critic into a believer and an historian; as if the historian had the right to maintain what is in contradiction with the faith, or as if he were permitted, solely on the condition of denying no dogma directly, to establish those premises from which flow the conclusion that dogmas are false or doubtful....

I likewise reprove that method of study and interpretation of Holy Scripture that takes its inspiration from rationalist methods of work, despising the tradition of the Church, the analogy of the faith and the directives of the Apostolic See and, with as much boldness as temerity, accepts only textual critique as its sole and supreme rule.

In the same motu proprio Sacrum Antistitum, which is primarily addressed to the bishops as the pastors and doctors, St. Pius X adjures them to take concrete and energetic measures to stem the modernist tide: injunctions, works placed on the Index, evictions, bans from teaching.

Whosoever, in one way or another, shows himself to be imbued with modernism, will be excluded, without mercy, from the charge of director or professor; if he already occupies such a charge he will be removed from it; ...the same applies to anyone who betrays a love of novelty in the matters of history, archeology or Biblical exegesis.

Who can fail to see that by this severity St. Pius X, far from being authoritarian and hard of heart, manifests his love of the small and the humble, from children in catechism classes to seminarians, otherwise delivered to the doctrinal duplicity of wolves disguised as shepherds? This is yet another example of our saint's admirable courage, for he could well foresee the unpopularity of this type of measure in the eyes of the "enlightened"! Moreover, with the hindsight of 100 years of history and the triumph of modernism, we can suspect that these measures were no match for the black-heartedness of which man is capable. More than one modernist must certainly have taken the oath with all the mental reservations imaginable, and with the conviction that the day of his revenge would surely come. Indeed, it has come.

Comparing the Cases of Loisy and Lagrange In guise of conclusion in this discussion of modernism, it would be very enlightening to establish a parallel between the case of Fr. Loisy and that of Fr. Lagrange, an eminent Dominican. In fact, Fr. Lagrange, founder of the Biblical School, attacked Loisy from the beginning—notwithstanding contemporary efforts to annex Lagrange into the modernist camp-all the while defending himself from the attacks of a more conservative exegesis (the reproaches made against the famous "historical method"). His boldness in certain interpretations of Genesis accounts earned him the reproach of the hierarchy and it seems to us that his sincere submission to the injunctions imposed on him no longer to study the Old Testament bore the fruits of fidelity and produced a work of an extraordinary fertility. On the contrary, Loisy shut himself up in a cynical obstinacy and was lost to Catholic science.

Furthermore, Pope Pius X did not like the new orientation of Fr. Lagrange's historical method, if we believe several witnesses, nor did he hide the fact; but he never translated this distrust of the method into canonical sanctions because of the doctrinal differences between the two cases and because of the different reactions of the priests to disciplinary methods. Between Lagrange's possible or admitted imprudence in methodology and interpretation, and Loisy's radical subversion of the very notion of revelation; between the obedience of the monk and the revolt of the Parisian intellectual, there was an abyss. This abyss was never crossed, neither by Lagrange nor by the papacy!

THE BIBLICAL COMMISSION AND THE BIBLICAL INSTITUTE The Pontifical Biblical Commission After the measures we called "defensive" come the "offensive" measures. It was a question of Rome's counterattack in the domain of science by giving the Church the means to specify her doctrines. A short time before his death, Pope Leo XIII had founded, Oct. 30, 1902, in the line of Providentissimus Deus, a Biblical Commission (the letter Vigilantiae Studiique), composed of cardinals, Biblical scholars and high-level theologians, who had been assigned a triple role:

Promote Biblical studies among Catholics,

Battle false opinions concerning Holy Scripture using scientific methods,

Study and clarify questions under debate and the problems that emerge in the Biblical domain. With the modernist crisis, St. Pius X gives the young Commission a more disciplinary function: deliver judgments that are both doctrinal and scientific on those questions that touch on contemporary Biblical exegesis. The responses given to these questions would most often be formulated by a yes or a no, according to the custom of the Church.

During the reign of Pius X, 15 responses were formulated by the Commission; under Benedict XV, two; under Pius XI, three; under Pius XII, nine; under Paul VI, two; and under John Paul II, four. For example, under Pius X, the Commission was asked to pronounce on the question of whether Moses was the author of the Pentateuch (June 27, 1906), on the nature and the author of the Book of Isaiah (June 28, 1908), and on the historical character of the first three chapters of Genesis (June 30, 1909), burning questions concerning the Old Testament, to which were joined several issues touching the composition of the New Testament.

The limits of each question and the formulation of each response reveal the traditional preoccupation to distinguish clearly what was certain concerning the faith, and probable or doubtful in the domain of science, and to set the limits of what was permitted and what was forbidden, what would be prudent and what imprudent. These responses were always sufficiently enlightening to allow one to distinguish between orthodox and heterodox exegesis, even in the questions that remain in dispute.

However, when more than one scholar refused his assent to the propositions of the Commission, St. Pius X made himself clear. By the motu proprio Praestantia of Nov. 18, 1907, he reaffirms in detail the initial goal of Leo XIII and thus reveals his own thoughts on the magisterial procedure concerning exegesis:

Our predecessor, by the apostolic letter Vigilantiae Studiique Memores of Oct. 30, 1902, instituted a pontifical council or Biblical Commission, composed of a certain number of cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, outstanding by their doctrine and their prudence, to whom were joined, in an advisory role, a large number of ecclesiastics chosen from among the learned theologians and Biblical scholars of different countries and representing diverse trends in exegetical methods and opinions. Indeed, the Pontiff thus desired to procure an extremely scientific advantage, suited to the present time; he wanted to give members of the Commission the possibility to propose, explain and discuss in all liberty the most diverse opinions. According to the letter itself, the cardinals would not pronounce before having taken into consideration and weighed all the arguments for and against. Nothing should be neglected which could cast light on the precise and veritable state of the Biblical questions proposed. It is only after these diverse steps that the Commission ought to submit its conclusions to the approval of the Supreme Pontiff and then publish them.

There follows the injunction to obey in conscience the doctrinal decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, under pain of canonical sanctions.

This activity of the Biblical Commission was to continue to our own day. Allow me to mention the famous Letter to Cardinal Suhard of Jan. 16, 1948, on the sources of the Pentateuch and the historicity of the Book of Genesis, expressing a judgment that Pius XII was to take up again in Humani Generis.

As for the recently published documents of the same Commission, you will forgive me if I do not speak of them. I am thinking of two in particular: The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (April 15, 1993) and The Jewish People and Their Holy Scriptures in the Christian Bible (May 24, 2001).

The Pontifical Biblical Institute Yet St. Pius X had still higher ambitions and wished to labor for the intellectual formation of exegetical experts who would be rich in both Catholic doctrine and human science. In the letter Scripturae Sanctae of Feb. 23, 1904, of which we will have more to say, he already expressed the desire to see the creation in the heart of the Eternal City of this Institute of Higher Biblical Studies, but the financial means were lacking, quite simply! Finally he founded the Pontifical Biblical Institute by the apostolic letter Vinea Electa of May 7, 1909, with a reminder that Pope Leo XIII had already projected such a foundation:

The Pontifical Biblical Institute will have for goal to create in the city of Rome a center of higher studies concerning Holy Scripture, in order to develop Biblical science and all related studies the most effectively possible, in the spirit of the Catholic Church.

However, the document quickly makes it clear that the intention of the pope is not one of dilettantism or gratuitous elitism, in view of forming of a sort of conservatory of barren erudition. It will be a question of the formation of young clerics:

To promote the study of Holy Scripture, according to our ability, and provide instruments of Catholic study for the principal benefit of Catholic youth, so that they need not have recourse to heterodox professors, to the great prejudice of healthy doctrine, and emerge all penetrated with the modernist spirit.

...[An institute (citing Leo XIII)] to which worthy young men will come from all over the world to specialize in the science of sacred letters.

...For this it is most necessary to choose from among the secular and regular clergy of different nations, young men having finished their ordinary studies of philosophy and theology, and give them such training as will perfect their understanding of the Biblical sciences, in order that they might teach them in their turn, either privately or publicly.

The saintly pope wished these select young men to attain the highest degree of excellence in the study of Holy Scripture, and thus bestowed a new role on the Biblical Commission (Scripturae Sanctae, Feb. 23, 1904):

We wish to bestow on it a precise mission, whose accomplishment will result in the preparation of an abundance of masters who will recommend themselves by the profundity and the integrity of their doctrine, and who will consecrate themselves to the interpretation of the Holy Books in Catholic schools....

We institute the academic degrees of master and doctor in the science of Holy Scripture, degrees which are to be conferred by the Biblical Commission, according to the rules indicated below:

No one will be permitted to seek the academic degrees in Holy Scripture unless he be a priest of one or the other clergies and, in addition, if he has not already obtained the title of doctor in sacred theology in a university or institute approved by the Apostolic See.

Here we see the essential element in the Pope's thought, a conviction that would appear in all his directives: specialization in Biblical questions first requires a complete theological formation. Thus in Vinea Electa:

17: Only those who are doctors in theology and who have entirely completed their course work in scholastic philosophy will be numbered among the students [of the Biblical Institute] properly speaking....

18: Those who have completed their course work in philosophy and theology may be admitted as auditors.

But the converse is true, which may surprise those indolent of spirit or attached to academic routine. In his letter Quoniam in Re Biblica of Mar. 24, 1906, establishing the rules that should preside over the teaching of Holy Scripture in seminaries, the pope declared that:

XVI: In all of the Academies, the candidates for the academic degrees of theology must answer certain Scriptural questions concerning the historical introduction of the Bible and its critique, and also concerning exegesis; and they will show by an examination that they can interpret the Holy Writ with relative ease and understand Hebrew and Biblical Greek.

By this we can measure the evolution of exegesis within the Church since ancient times. What the theologians of long ago vaguely conceived as an auxiliary—for example through the early movements in the Dominican Order of the Middle Ages toward a Hellenistic or Semitic formation—becomes a canonical rule in response to the challenges of modernity! Moreover, these high-level directives do not concern only an elite of exegetes or theologians! The pope continues in Quoniam in Re Biblica:

V: Concerning the Old Testament, the professor will profit from recent discoveries to provide historical context and to describe the relations of the Hebrew people with other Oriental peoples.

The students showing the most promise will be formed in the study of the Hebrew language and in Biblical Greek, as well as in the study of some other Semitic language, such as Syriac or Arabic, insofar as it is possible.

Citing Leo XIII:

It is necessary that professors of Holy Scripture—and the same applies to theologians-know the languages in which the canonical books were originally drafted by the sacred writers, and it would be excellent if the ecclesiastical students acquire the same knowledge, above all those who aspire to academic degrees in theology. It will be necessary to take special care to have, in all Academies, teaching chairs in the languages of antiquity, above all the Semitic languages. (Providentissimus Deus)

The thought of St. Pius X concerning studies and Biblical formation can be summarized in three principal ideas, which constantly recur:

It is necessary to pay special attention to the formation of the young and to cultivate an elite of specialists in exegesis for the next generation.

It is necessary to require a high level of qualification, notably in languages.

It is necessary to maintain an indissoluble tie between theology and Biblical study. Fr. Lagrange added in his personal notes:

"You've got to know your grammar!"

We cite a last example of this double preoccupation with theological tradition and authentic modern science, this time taken from a letter that the pope wrote to Monsignor Le Camus, bishop of Saintes and La Rochelle, on the occasion of the publication of his work, L'oeuvre des Apotres [The Labor of the Apostles] in three volumes (Jan. 11, 1906):

Indeed, just as we must condemn the temerity of those who, preoccupied much more with satisfying a taste for novelty than with the teaching of the Church, do not hesitate to practice critical methods of an abusive freedom, we must also disapprove of the attitude of those who do not dare, in any way, to depart from the received Scriptural exegesis, even when the faith remains untouched and the wise progress of studies most urgently invites a change of method.

REVISION OF THE VULGATE The last Biblical project on a large scale undertaken by Pope Pius X was the revision of the text of the Latin Bible, in use in the Church of Rome under the name of Vulgate.

This is not the place to give more than a brief explanation of the Vulgate. We know that in the fourth century, at the behest of Pope Damasus, St. Jerome took on the enormous task of revising the Latin translations of the Bible in existence at that time, then of retranslating the different texts from the Hebrew original. His version was so popular that, over time, it became the official version of the Church, to the extent that the Council of Trent declared it "authentic," that is, in such conformity with the original divine Word that it should be considered free of error in all that concerned faith and morals. However, like every written manuscript, St. Jerome's Vulgate had suffered the vicissitudes of transmission, so much so that the Holy Synod requested the establishment of the best possible text, that is to say the text in the most perfect conformity with the original as penned by the great Doctor of the Church.

The history of the edition of Sixtus V (1590); of its withdrawal by the cardinals ten days after the death of the pope because of its many erroneous or unfounded lessons and corrections; of its new edition, amended during the reign of Clement VIII (1592) but presented under the name of his predecessor and on the advice of St. Robert Bellarmine; constitutes a surprisingly comical episode in such a sacred domain. In any case, this Sixto-Clementine edition, as it is known, had been reprinted without modification for more than three centuries when Pope Pius X decided to undertake its revision.

In a letter dated April 30, 1907, he confides the labor of this revision to the primatial abbots of the Order of St. Benedict, as a work already projected by Leo XIII when he founded the Biblical Commission.

In May 1907, Cardinal Rampolla announced the pontifical project to the abbots of the different congregations gathered at Rome.

In the autumn of the same year, Dom Adrian Francis Gasquet, a future cardinal, was charged with the direction of a team of revisers, who would have their center of studies in the Roman convent of San Girolamo. (Letter Delatum Sodalibus, Dec. 3, 1907).

Once again, we need to appreciate the pope's extreme boldness as a reformer, because a revision necessarily implies the modification of the very letter of the Latin text to which generations of Catholics had become attached during the course of the last three centuries. In a word, it was a small revolution in the name of a greater fidelity to the tradition of St. Jerome.

You are to accomplish a laborious and difficult work, one already undertaken by men famous for their erudition, among them several popes, and yet whose labors were not crowned by unqualified success; ...namely, to restore to its original state St. Jerome's text of the Bible, often corrupted over the passage of time.

Moreover, this "revolution" would be all the more traditional that the establishment of the text would be based exclusively on Latin manuscripts (cf. Dom Quentin, Memoire sur I'etablissement du texte de la Vulgate, 1922); the Roman philologists of the 16th century did not have the same scientific criteria, and where there was a doubt they gave the precedence to the Greek or Hebrew texts, without scientific justification. The advances in philology would not permit the same error! This confidence in the technical progress of contemporary philology is unambiguously expressed in the letter to Dom Gasquet:

The singular importance of this work, the Church's firm confidence that you will succeed in it, the present state of science, to which we must surely give the credit of knowing how to carry out research of this nature with an irreproachable exactitude....

We further know, by the testimony of Dom Gasquet, to what point Pope Pius X took to heart the success of this undertaking, describing in detail what he expected from it and insisting especially on the scientific nature of the work. For this, he wished that every library in Europe be searched for new manuscripts, that photographs be systematically taken of these manuscripts, and that questions of finance present no obstacle for the realization of this immortal work, encouraging fund-raising efforts all over the world. Furthermore, he was fully aware that it would take a considerable amount of time before the work would be complete.

As a matter of fact, the work is still not complete!

I would add in conclusion that this revision of the Vulgate following the Latin manuscripts is not to be confused with the New Vulgate promulgated by John Paul II on April 25, 1979, and which is a work of revision and retranslation according to philological data outside the Latin tradition (Hebrew, Greek, and other versions).

CONCLUSION If St. Pius X proved his greatness as a pope of reform in the domain of Biblical studies, it is because-as we hope to have shown-he saw with an admirable clarity how to ally tradition and modernity, the Catholic faith and authentic science, in the pursuit of a unified goal, capable of inspiring enthusiasm.

The study of Holy Scripture is not a purely human study; it cannot be separated from the teaching of the Magisterium under pain of error and of straying into heresy, or even into materialism. Hence the need for a permanent union between exegesis, scholastic philosophy and theology.

This study is not optional, either, but concerns the faith of all the members of the Church, as well as the Church's credibility and her very future, which is why it is so important to discover promising talent among seminarians and form them to excellence.

Neither is it a research conducted by dilettantes fascinated by the ancient world, nor a narcissistic contemplation of human knowledge, but rather has for its goal a deeper understanding of the Word of Salvation.

If St. Pius X was not the pope who introduced this renewal, since he was following in the footsteps of Leo XIII, nevertheless he created or vivified the structures intended to compose a "doctrine" and a "habitus" of Biblical research in the 20th century.

Need we point out that one cannot judge his work according to its later deviations? In any case, we know that it is on the basis of the doctrine and the directives of St. Pius X in the Scriptural domain that we are able today to resist the winds of a modernist heresy become all but official; to take up the challenges presented by the discoveries of recent decades (Qumran); and to avoid falling into the trap of certain reactions—sometimes heterodox, even with the best of intentions—to an all-pervading subversion.

Translated exclusively for Angelus Press by Miss Ann Marie Temple from Saint Pie X: Les Actes, papers presented at the Society of Saint Pius X's colloquium held March 29, 2003.