Joseph Turmel
Joseph Turmel, born on 13 December 1859 in Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) and died on 5 February 1943 in Paris, is a French Catholic priest, historian of Christian dogmas, who was excommunicated. Biography. Joseph Turmel was born on |December 13, 1859 in Rennes, 142, rue de Saint-Malo. After studying at the seminaries of Rennes and Angers, he was ordained priest in 1882 and appointed professor at the Major Seminary of Rennes where he lost his faith. He was excommunicated in 1930. He died during the World War II on February 5, 1943. Studies and priestly activity. From  1876 to 1880, he studied philosophy and theology at the Major Seminary of the Archdiocese of Rennes, thereafter he continued until 1882 his studies at the Faculty of Theology of University of Angers. He was ordained a priest on June 3, 1882, and was gharged the same year with teaching dogmatics at the Major Seminary. Loss of his teaching chair. His liberal opinions on Old Testament exegesis led him to be deprived of his chair; in 1893 he was given a place as chaplain in a convent of nuns in Rennes and he kept it until 1930. During these years  of solitude he worked as a historian of dogmatics and became an expert in Patristics. Modernism and excommunication. As early as 1886, according to what he said himself, Turmel had lost the Catholic faith, but he nevertheless wanted to remain in the Church. He published, under his own name, studies which did not attack the Catholic doctrine frontally and, under pseudonyms (for example Henri Delafosse), more audacious works. An attempt was made to attribute to him two of his pseudonymous works against Trinitarian and Marian dogma (“The Dogma of the Trinity in the First Three Centuries” and “The Blessed Virgin  in History”) but without success. In 1910, he refused to take the oath against modernism. Unmasked, suspended, then excommunicated in November 1930, the old man nevertheless continued to wear the cassock, to say mass at home to a few faithful and to work. He then benefited, until his death on |February 5, 1943, from the friendship, comfort and material assistance of the militants of Freethought in Rennes. He died during the Second World War on February 5, 1943, at 11, rue Waldeck-Rousseau, in Rennes. He is sometimes referred to as patristician. Placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Turmel's  works (some of which were written under the pseudonyms Antoine Dupin, Henri Delafosse, Louis Coulange, Hippolyte Gallerand, Guillaume Herzog, Edmond Perrin, André Lagarde) were condemned and banned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church, as well as Félix Sartiaux's study on him. Works. Under his name Works under pseudonyms: See also. Bibliography. Studies: Articles: