Ernest Renan

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Lore & Background

Renan was born at Tréguier in Brittany, in northwestern France, to a family of fishermen. His grandfather, having made a small fortune with his fishing smack, bought a house at Tréguier and settled there, and his father, captain of a small cutter and an ardent republican, married the daughter of a Royalist tradesman from the neighbouring town of Lannion. He was five years old when his father died, and his sister, Henriette, twelve years his senior, became the moral head of the household. During the summer of 1838, Renan won all the prizes at the college of Tréguier. Félix Dupanloup sent for Renan, who was then fifteen years old and had never been outside Brittany. In 1840, Renan left Saint Nicholas to study philosophy at the Saint-Sulpice Seminary near Paris. His course completed at Issy, in 1844 he entered the college of St Sulpice in order to take his degree in philology prior to entering the church, and, here, he began the study of Hebrew. In October 1845, Renan left Saint Sulpice for Stanislas, a lay college of the Oratorians. In 1847, he obtained the Volney prize for the manuscript of his 'General History of Semitic Languages.' In 1856, Renan married in Paris Cornélie Scheffer, daughter of Hendrik Scheffer and niece of Ary Scheffer. They had two children, Ary Renan, born in 1858, who became a painter, and Noémi, born in 1862, who eventually married philologist Yannis Psycharis. In 1863, the American Philosophical Society elected him an international Member.

Reader's Guide

Renan's significance rests on his controversial Life of Jesus (1863), which argued Jesus was able to purify himself of 'Jewish traits' and that he became an Aryan. The book promoted racial ideas and infused race into theology and the person of Jesus; he depicted Jesus as a Galilean who was transformed from a Jew into a Christian, and that Christianity emerged purified of any Jewish influences. The book's controversial assertions that the life of Jesus should be written like the life of any historic person, and that the Bible could and should be subject to the same critical scrutiny as other historical documents caused controversy and enraged many Christians. It likewise provoked anger within the Jewish community due to its depiction of Judaism as foolish and absurdly illogical, and for its insistence that Jesus and Christianity were superior to Judaism. Renan is among the first scholars to advance the Khazar theory, which held that Ashkenazi Jews were descendants of the Khazars, Turkic peoples who had adopted the Jewish religion and allegedly migrated to central and eastern Europe following the collapse of their khanate. On this basis he alleged that the Jews were 'an incomplete race.' He espoused popular political theories especially concerning nationalism, national identity, and the superiority of White people over other human races. In La Réforme Intellectuelle et Morale (1871), Renan tried to safeguard France's future, proposing an ideal of honor and duty imposed by a chosen few on the recalcitrant and subject multitude.

Did You Know?

• Renan won all the prizes at the college of Tréguier during the summer of 1838.
• He obtained the Volney prize in 1847 for his manuscript 'General History of Semitic Languages.'
• Renan led an archaeological expedition 'Mission to Phoenicia. 1864-1874' to Lebanon, Syria and Palestine trying to track the ancient Phoenicians.
• In 1863, the American Philosophical Society elected him an international Member.
• Renan's Life of Jesus was first translated into English in the year of its publication by Charles E. Wilbour.