Abstract
Because of the personalities of the players, their respective magisteria and the importance of the issues at stake, the confrontation between Pius IX and Renan has something of what I would call the spine of the century. It can be read in the triple light of liberalism and reaction, of the historical accompaniment of the Roman question, and of the specificity of a work devoted to Christianity, which could only be a permanent battle game, marked as it was by Vie de Jésus. An image of synthesis would correspond to this: the infallible dogmatist and the "seeker of truth". With Renan's wish: ah, if Christianity did without the Pope.
