department from north-east to south-west, and divides it into two nearly equal portions. To the south-east is the district of the Sologne, to the north-west the rich wheat-growing country of the Beauce (q.v.) which stretches to the Loir. Beyond that river lies the Perche. The surface of this region, which contains the highest altitude in the department (840 ft.), is varied by hills, valleys, hedged fields and orchards. The Sologne was formerly a region of forests, of which those in the neighbourhood of Chambord are the last remains. Its soil, once barren and marshy, has been considerably improved by draining and afforestation, though pools are still very numerous. The district is much frequented by sportsmen. The Cher and Loir traverse pleasant valleys, occasionally bounded by walls of tufa in which dwellings have been excavated, as at Les Roches in the Loir valley; the stone, hardened by exposure to the air, is also used for building purposes. The Loire and, with the help of the Berry canal, the Cher are navigable. The chief remaining rivers of the department are the Beuvron, which flows into the Loire on the left, and the Sauldre, a right-hand affluent of the Cher. The climate is temperate and mild, though that of the Beauce tends to dryness and that of the Sologne to dampness. The mean annual temperature is between 52° and 53° F.
The department is primarily agricultural, yielding abundance of wheat and oats. Besides these the chief products are rye, wheat and potatoes. Vines thrive on the valley slopes, the vineyards falling into four groups—those of the Cher, which yield fine red wines, the Sologne, the Blésois and the Vendômois. In the valleys fruit-trees and nursery gardens are numerous; the asparagus of Romorantin and Vendôme is well-known. The Sologne supplies pine and birch for fuel, and there are extensive forests around Blois and on both sides of the Loir. Pasture is of good quality in the valleys. Sheep are the chief stock; the Perche breed of horses is much sought after for its combination of lightness and strength. Bee-farming is of some importance in the Sologne. Formerly the speciality of Loir-et-Cher was the production of gun-flints. Stone-quarries are numerous. The chief industries are the cloth-manufacture of Romorantin, and leather-dressing and glove-making at Vendôme; and lime-burning, flour-milling, distilling, saw-milling, paper-making and the manufacture of “sabots” and boots and shoes, hosiery and linen goods, are carried on. The department is served chiefly by the Orléans railway.
The arrondissements are those of Blois, Romorantin and Vendôme, with 24 cantons and 297 communes. Loir-et-Cher forms part of the educational division (académie) of Paris. Its court of appeal and the headquarters of the V. army corps, to the regions of which it belongs, are at Orléans. Blois, the capital, Vendôme, Romorantin and Chambord are noticed separately. In addition to those of Blois and Chambord there are numerous fine châteaux in the department, of which that of Montrichard with its donjon of the 11th century, that of Chaumont dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, and that of Cheverny (17th century) in the late Renaissance style are the most important. Those at St Aignan, Lassay, Lavardin and Cellettes may also be mentioned. Churches wholly or in part of Romanesque architecture are found at Faverolles, Selles-sur-Cher, St Aignan and Suèvres. The village of Trôo is built close to ancient tumuli and has an interesting church of the 12th century, and among other remains those of a lazar-house of the Romanesque period. At Pontlevoy are the church, consisting of a fine choir in the Gothic style, and the buildings of a Benedictine abbey. At La Poissonnière (near Montoire) is a small Renaissance manor-house, in which Ronsard was born in 1524.
LOISY, ALFRED FIRMIN (1857– ), French Catholic
theologian, was born at Ambrières in French Lorraine of parents
who, descended from a long line of resident peasantry, tilled
there the soil themselves. The physically delicate boy was put
into the ecclesiastical school of St Dizier, without any intention
of a clerical career; but he decided for the priesthood, and in
1874 entered the Grand Seminaire of Chalons-sur-Marne. Mgr
Meignan, then bishop of Chalons, afterwards cardinal and archbishop
of Tours, ordained him priest in 1879. After being curé
successively of two villages in that diocese, Loisy went in May
1881, to study and take a theological degree, to the Institut
Catholique in Paris. Here he was influenced, as to biblical
languages and textual criticism, by the learned and loyal-minded
Abbé Paulin Martin, and as to a vivid consciousness of the true
nature, gravity and urgency of the biblical problems and an
Attic sense of form by the historical intuition and the mordant
irony of Abbé Louis Duchesne. At the governmental institutions,
Professors Oppert and Halévy helped further to train him.
He took his theological degree in March 1890, by the oral defence
of forty Latin scholastic theses and by a French dissertation,
Histoire du canon de l’ancien testament, published as his first
book in that year.
Professor now at the Institut Catholique, he published successively his lectures: Histoire du canon du N.T. (1891); Histoire critique du texte et des versions de la Bible (1892); and Les Évangiles synoptiques (1893, 1894). The two latter works appeared successively in the bi-monthly L’Enseignement biblique, a periodical written throughout and published by himself. But already, on the occasion of the death of Ernest Renan, October 1892, the attempts made to clear up the main principles and results of biblical science, first by Mgr d’Hulst, rector of the Institut Catholique, in his article “La Question biblique” (Le Correspondant, Jan. 25th, 1893), and then by Loisy himself, in his paper “La Question biblique et l’inspiration des Écritures” (L’Enseignement biblique, Nov.-Dec. 1893), promptly led to serious trouble. The latter article was immediately followed by Loisy’s dismissal, without further explanation, from the Institut Catholique. And a few days later Pope Leo XIII. published his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, which indeed directly condemned not Abbé Loisy’s but Mgr d’Hulst’s position, yet rendered the continued publication of consistently critical work so difficult that Loisy himself suppressed his Enseignement at the end of 1893. Five further instalments of his Synoptiques were published after this, bringing the work down to the Confession of Peter inclusively.
Loisy next became chaplain to a Dominican convent and girls’ school at Neuilly-sur-Seine (Oct. 1894–Oct. 1899), and here matured his apologetic method, resuming in 1898 the publication of longer articles, under the pseudonyms of Desprès and Firmin in the Revue du clergé français, and of Jacques Simon in the lay Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses. In the former review, a striking paper upon development of doctrine (Dec. 1st, 1898) headed a series of studies apparently taken from an already extant large apologetic work. In October 1899 he resigned his chaplaincy for reasons of health, and settled at Bellevue, somewhat farther away from Paris. His notable paper, “La Religion d’Israël” (Revue du clergé français, Oct. 15th, 1900), the first of a series intended to correct and replace Renan’s presentation of that great subject, was promptly censured by Cardinal Richard, archbishop of Paris; and though scholarly and zealous ecclesiastics, such as the Jesuit Père Durand and Monseigneur Mignot, archbishop of Albi, defended the general method and several conclusions of the article, the aged cardinal never rested henceforward till he had secured a papal condemnation also. At the end of 1900 Loisy secured a government lectureship at the École des Hautes Études Pratiques, and delivered there in succession courses on the Babylonian myths and the first chapters of Genesis; the Gospel parables; the narrative of the ministry in the synoptic Gospels; and the Passion narratives in the same. The first course was published in the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses; and here also appeared instalments of his commentary on St John’s Gospel, his critically important Notes sur la Genèse, and a Chronique biblique unmatched in its mastery of its numberless subjects and its fearless yet delicate penetration.
It was, however, two less erudite little books that brought him a European literary reputation and the culmination of his ecclesiastical troubles. L’Évangile et l’église appeared in November 1902 (Eng. trans., 1903). Its introduction and six chapters present with rare lucidity the earliest conceptions of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Son of God, the Church, Christian dogma and Catholic worship; and together form a severely critico-historical yet strongly Catholic answer to Harnack’s still largely pietistic Wesen des Christentums. It develops throughout the principles that “what is essential in Jesus’ Gospel is what occupies the first and largest place in His authentic teaching, the ideas for
