EsoteriaA library of sacred & hidden knowledge
Liber XV · History & Scholarship

Liber XV · History & Scholarship · Chapter III: Historians & Scholars

The Paris EPHE Chair: First Academic Post in Esotericism

The EPHE chair of Christian esotericism, created in Paris in 1965 for François Secret and later held by Antoine Faivre and Jean-Pierre Brach.

6 min read 1,428 words Updated

In 1965 the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in Paris created a chair for the history of Christian esotericism in its Section of Religious Sciences, the first university position anywhere devoted to the historical study of esoteric currents. Its first holder was François Secret, the leading historian of Christian Kabbalah; in 1979 Antoine Faivre succeeded him and broadened the chair to the history of esoteric and mystical currents in modern and contemporary Europe, and in 2002 Jean-Pierre Brach took it over.

The École Pratique des Hautes Études and its Section of Religious Sciences§

The EPHE is not a conventional university. Founded in 1868 under the Second Empire minister Victor Duruy, it was designed as a research school in which established scholars, called directeurs d'études, would train advanced students through seminars on their own specialities. Each "chair" is in effect a research direction defined by its holder's field, and new chairs can be created when the institution judges a subject worth pursuing.

The Fifth Section, devoted to the religious sciences (sciences religieuses), was founded in 1886, when the French state closed the Catholic faculties of theology in its universities and wished to keep the study of religion alive on a secular, historical basis. Over the following century the section became one of the world's leading centres for the history of religions, home at various times to specialists in ancient Judaism, early Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Iranian religion, including the Islamicist Henry Corbin, a central figure of the Eranos conferences. Its non-denominational, philological approach made it possible to study subjects that confessional faculties would have avoided.

Founding the chair of Christian esotericism in 1965§

The chair created in 1965 bore the title "history of Christian esotericism" (histoire de l'ésotérisme chrétien). The phrase reflected a particular French situation. In French, ésotérisme had been widely used since the nineteenth century, and the writings of René Guénon and his followers had made "Christian esotericism" a familiar idea in religious circles, usually meaning a hidden, initiatic core of Christianity. French literary historians had also studied the esoteric sources of Romanticism; Auguste Viatte's Les sources occultes du romantisme (1928) is a classic example.

The new chair, however, was not meant to promote any esoteric teaching. It placed under historical study the currents in which Christians had combined their faith with Kabbalah, Hermeticism, alchemy, astrology and theosophical speculation, from the Renaissance onward. In practice this meant the Christian Cabala of Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin and Guillaume Postel; Christian theosophy in the tradition of Jacob Boehme; the Rosicrucian literature; and the illuminist and Masonic milieus of the eighteenth century.

François Secret and Christian Kabbalah§

François Secret (1911–2003) was the natural choice. He had devoted his scholarly life to the Christian reception of Jewish mysticism, combining knowledge of Hebrew, Latin and the vernacular literatures of Renaissance Europe. His Le Zôhar chez les kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance (1958) examined how Christian scholars read and translated the Zohar, and his major survey, Les Kabbalistes chrétiens de la Renaissance (1964), appeared just before the chair was created. It remains a standard reference on the subject.

Secret was above all a bibliographer and textual historian. Much of his work concerned the visionary French orientalist Guillaume Postel (1510–1581), whose manuscripts and printed works he catalogued and edited, and the networks of scholars, printers and patrons who carried Kabbalistic ideas across Europe. His seminars trained students to read sources closely, trace their transmission and avoid both the enthusiasm of practitioners and the dismissiveness of rationalist historians. That combination of erudition and neutrality became a hallmark of the Paris chair.

From Christian esotericism to esoteric currents§

When Secret retired in 1979, the chair passed to Antoine Faivre, a Germanist who had written on eighteenth-century illuminism and Christian theosophy. Faivre changed the title of the chair to the history of esoteric and mystical currents in modern and contemporary Europe (histoire des courants ésotériques et mystiques dans l'Europe moderne et contemporaine).

The change was more than cosmetic. "Christian esotericism" implied a single hidden tradition within one religion; "esoteric currents" pointed to a plurality of historical movements that could be traced, compared and dated. Faivre extended the field chronologically into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including occultism, Theosophy and the reception of esoteric ideas in literature and art, and sought a working definition of what these currents shared. His famous model of esotericism as a "form of thought" with six characteristics, set out in 1992, grew from this teaching; it is discussed in defining esotericism.

During Faivre's tenure the Paris chair became an international meeting point. Students and visiting scholars from Europe and the Americas attended his seminars, and the French journal Aries, which Faivre co-founded in the 1980s with the Rosicrucian specialist Roland Edighoffer, gave the field a periodical voice. The story of that journal is told in our article on Aries.

Jean-Pierre Brach and the Paris school after 2002§

In 2002 Jean-Pierre Brach succeeded Faivre. A specialist in Christian Kabbalah, Guillaume Postel and the symbolism of numbers in early modern thought, Brach brought the chair back towards the close textual work associated with Secret while keeping Faivre's broad chronological range. He also co-edited, with Faivre, Roelof van den Broek and Wouter Hanegraaff, the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (2005), a landmark reference work that drew on both the Paris and the Amsterdam traditions.

Around the chair grew a wider Paris milieu of scholars working on esotericism, Freemasonry, Guénon and Traditionalism, and the political uses of esoteric ideas. The journal Politica Hermetica, published from the late 1980s, is one product of this environment. Paris has thus retained a distinctive style: strongly philological, centred on early modern Christian sources, and wary of grand theoretical definitions.

Why the Paris chair mattered§

For more than thirty years the EPHE chair was unique. No other university had a post explicitly devoted to esotericism until the University of Amsterdam created its chair in the history of Hermetic philosophy in 1999, followed by the University of Exeter in 2005. The Paris chair proved that esoteric currents could be studied with the same tools and standards as any other part of the history of religions, and it gave a home to scholars who might otherwise have been isolated in departments of literature, history or theology.

It also shaped the definition of the field. Because the chair began with Christian Kabbalah and Christian theosophy, early academic work on esotericism concentrated on early modern Christian Europe. Later scholars widened the scope to antiquity, Judaism, Islam and contemporary culture, but the Paris emphasis on Renaissance and post-Renaissance currents still underlies the standard account in what is Western esotericism. The relationship between the Paris and Amsterdam chairs is traced further in historians and scholars and in our article on the Amsterdam chair.

Frequently asked questions§

Who held the EPHE chair of esotericism?§

François Secret held it from its creation in 1965 until 1979, Antoine Faivre from 1979 to 2002, and Jean-Pierre Brach from 2002. Each holder shaped its field around his own research, from Christian Kabbalah to modern esoteric currents.

Why was the chair originally called "Christian esotericism"?§

The term was common in French religious and literary writing, and the chair's first subjects were the Christian Kabbalah, theosophy and Hermeticism of early modern Europe. Faivre replaced it in 1979 with "esoteric and mystical currents", which avoided implying a single hidden Christian tradition.

Was the EPHE chair the first of its kind?§

Yes. It is generally regarded as the first academic chair devoted to the history of esotericism. The second was created at the University of Amsterdam in 1999, and a third research centre followed at the University of Exeter in 2005.

Sources and further reading§