Every ecclesiastical historian knows, or, dare I say, should know,
Lucien Febvre's incisive and polemical article, ‘Une question mal
posée’, first published in 1929, in which, beginning with a critique
of recent work on the origins of the Reformation, the author ended by
calling ecclesiastical history into question. The aim of this article is to
place this famous article in context by examining Febvre's main
contributions to the history of the Church, or as he preferred to say, the
history of religion. Lucien Febvre (1878–1956) was a prolific writer and,
although he has not been studied as intensively as his junior colleagues
Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel, his scholarly work has often been
discussed. A bibliography published in 1990 listed 2,143 items either by
or about Febvre which had been published up to that time. Since the
history of religion was one of Febvre's main interests, it follows that this
article will have to be rigorously selective, discussing his major
contributions to the field together with a few studies of his achievement.
In order to give some sense of his intellectual development, Febvre's
books and articles on religious history will be discussed in chronological
order of publication, before any attempt at an assessment of his reception,
cool or warm, or the significance of his work. These books and articles
appeared in three clusters, published in 1901–11, 1925–30, and 1941–9
respectively.
