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{{short description|French writer, poet and essayist (1846–1917)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2025}}
{{Use Oxford spelling|date=November 2018}}
{{Infobox writer
| image = Léon Bloy Portrait 1887.jpg
| caption = Bloy in 1887
| birth_date = {{birth date|1846|07|11|df=y}}
| birth_place = [[Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac]], [[July Monarchy|Kingdom of France]]
| death_date = {{death date and age|1917|11|03|1846|07|11|df=y}}
| death_place = [[Bourg-la-Reine]], [[French Third Republic|French Republic]]
| occupation = {{hlist |Novelist |essayist |poet}}
| signature = Léon Bloy - Signature vec.svg
}}

'''Léon Bloy''' ({{IPA|fr|leɔ̃ blwa}}; 11 July 1846 – 3 November 1917) was a French Catholic novelist, essayist, [[pamphleteer]] (or lampoonist), and satirist, known additionally for his eventual and passionate defense of [[Catholic Church|Catholicism]] and for his influence within [[Catholic Church in France|French Catholic]] circles.

==Biography==
Bloy was born on 11 July 1846 in [[Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac]], in the [[arondissement]] of [[Périgueux]], [[Dordogne]]. He was the second of six sons of Jean-Baptiste Bloy, a [[Voltaire]]an [[Freethought|freethinker]], and Anne-Marie Carreau, a stern disciplinarian and pious Spanish-Catholic daughter of a Napoleonic soldier.{{r|Alter-Gilbert}} After an [[agnostic]] and unhappy youth{{r|Sheed}} in which he cultivated an intense hatred for the [[Catholic Church]] and its teaching,{{r|Alter-Gilbert}} his father found him a job in Paris, where he went in 1864. In December 1868, he met the aging Catholic author [[Barbey d'Aurevilly]], who lived opposite him in rue Rousselet and who became his mentor. Shortly afterwards, he underwent a dramatic religious conversion and was received into the Catholic Church.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Pearce |first=Joseph |date=2023-05-25 |title=A Little Flower in the Gutter |url=https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2023/05/little-flower-gutter-woman-who-was-poor-leon-bloy-joseph-pearce.html |access-date=2025-11-20 |website=The Imaginative Conservative |language=en-US}}</ref>

Bloy was a friend of the author [[Joris-Karl Huysmans]], the painter [[Georges Rouault]], the philosophers [[Jacques Maritain|Jacques]] and [[Raïssa Maritain]]{{r|Bermudez}} and was instrumental in reconciling these intellectuals with Catholicism.<ref>[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maritain/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Jacques Maritain]</ref> However, he acquired a reputation for [[bigotry]] because of his frequent outbursts of temper. For example, in 1885, after the death of [[Victor Hugo]], whom Bloy believed to be an [[atheist]], Bloy decried Hugo's "senility," "avarice," and "hypocrisy," identifying Hugo among "contemplatives of biological scum."{{r|Robb}}{{sfn|Bloy|1947|p=82}} Bloy's first novel, ''[[The Desperate Man (novel)|Le Désespéré]]'', a critique of [[rationalism]] and those he believed to be in league with it, made him fall out with the literary community of his time and even many of his old friends. Soon, Bloy could count such prestigious authors as [[Émile Zola]], [[Guy de Maupassant]], [[Ernest Renan]], and [[Anatole France]] as his enemies.{{r|Bermudez}}

Bloy was noted for personal attacks, but he saw them as the mercy or indignation of God. According to [[Jacques Maritain]], he used to say: "My anger is the effervescence of my pity."{{sfn|Bloy|1947|pp=11, 13}} Among the many targets of Bloy's attacks were people of business. In an essay in ''Pilgrim of the Absolute'', he compared the businessmen of [[Chicago]] unfavourably to the cultured people of Paris:

{{blockquote|"In Paris you have the [[Saint Chapelle]] and the [[Louvre]], true enough, but we in Chicago kill eighty thousand hogs a day!..." The man who says that is in truth a business man. |author=Léon Bloy |source="Les Affaires Sont Les Affaires" ("Business Is Business") in "The Wisdom of the [[Bourgeois]]", part of ''Pilgrim of the Absolute''.{{sfn|Bloy|1947|p=132}}}}

In addition to his published works, he left a large body of correspondence with public and literary figures. He died on 3 November 1917 in [[Bourg-la-Reine]].

==Our Lady of La Salette==
Inspired by both the millennialist visionary [[Eugène Vintras]] and the reports of an apparition at La Salette—[[Our Lady of La Salette]]—Bloy was convinced that the Virgin's message was that if people did not reform, the end time was imminent.{{r|Ziegler}} He was particularly critical of the attention paid to the shrine at Lourdes and resented the fact that it distracted people from what he saw as the less sentimental message of La Salette.{{r|Kaufmann}}

==Influence==
Argentinian writer [[Jorge Luis Borges]] named Bloy in the foreword to his short story collection ''Artificios'' (later part of the anthology ''[[Ficciones]]'') as one of seven in "the heterogeneous list of writers I am constantly re-reading", further acknowledging his influence in the story "[[Three Versions of Judas]]" (1944).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Borges |first1=Jorge Luis |title=Ficciones |date=1956 |publisher=Emecé |location=Buenos Aires}}</ref> Borges further mentions Bloy in his essay "Kafka and his Precursors" (1951) as an example of an author who wrote [[Kafkaesque]] texts prior to the writings of [[Franz Kafka]], noting a short story from ''Histoires désobligeantes'' about "some people who amass globes, atlases, train schedules, and trunks, and who die without ever having left the town where they were born."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gwern.net/doc/borges/1951-borges-kafkaandhisprecursors.pdf |author=Jorge Luis Borges |title=Kafka and his Precursors |year=1951 }}</ref> Borges's essay "The Mirror of Enigmas" (1952) also largely concerns Léon Bloy. In it, Borges tracks down the recurring appearance of phrases inspired by [[First Epistle to the Corinthians|I Corinthians 13:12]] ("for now we see through a glass, darkly" in the [[King James Bible|KJV]] translation) throughout Bloy's oeuvre.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Borges |first1=Jorge Luis |author1-link=Jorge Luis Borges |title=Nueva antología personal |date=1980 |orig-date=1967 |publisher=Bruguera |location=Barcelona |pages=252-257 |language=Spanish}}</ref>

Bloy is quoted in the epigraph at the beginning of [[Graham Greene]]'s novel ''[[The End of the Affair]]'' (1951), though Greene claimed that "this irate man lacked creative instinct" in reference to Bloy.<ref>Reinhardt, Kurt F. ''The Theological Novel of Modern Europe''. New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1969, p. 86</ref>

In his novel ''The Harp and the Shadow'' (1979), [[Alejo Carpentier]] excoriates Bloy as a raving, [[Christopher Columbus|Columbus]]-defending lunatic during Vatican deliberations over the explorer's canonization. Bloy is also quoted at the beginning of [[John Irving]]'s ''[[A Prayer for Owen Meany]]'', and there are several quotations from his ''Letters to my Fiancée'' in [[Charles Williams (British writer)|Charles Williams]]'s anthology ''The New Christian Year''.{{r|Quotations in Williams}} ''Le Désespéré'' was republished in 2005 by [[Éditions Underbahn]] with a preface by [[Maurice G. Dantec]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bloy|first=Léon|title=Le désespéré : roman|date=2005|publisher=Éditions Underbahn|others=Maurice G. Dantec|isbn=978-0-9774224-0-1|location=Wilmington, Del.|oclc=166583047}}</ref> The historian [[Jaime Eyzaguirre]] came to be influenced by Bloy's writings.{{r|Eyzaguirre}}

According to the historian [[John Connelly (historian)|John Connelly]], Bloy's ''Le Salut par les Juifs'', with its apocalyptically radical interpretation of chapters 9 to 11 of [[Epistle to the Romans|Paul's Letter to the Romans]], had a major influence on the Catholic theologians of the [[Second Vatican Council]] responsible for section 4 of the council's declaration ''[[Nostra aetate]]'' (1965), the doctrinal basis for a revolutionary change in the Catholic Church's attitude to [[Judaism]].{{r|Connelly}}

In 2013, [[Pope Francis]] surprised many by quoting Bloy during his first homily as pope: "When one does not confess Jesus Christ, I am reminded of the expression of Léon Bloy: 'He who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil.' When one does not confess Jesus Christ, one confesses the worldliness of the devil."{{r|Bermudez}}

Bloy and his effect on 21st-century French scholars make a significant appearance in [[Michel Houellebecq]]'s novel ''[[Submission (novel)|Submission]]'' (2015).

==Works==
===Novels ===
* ''Le Désespéré'' (1887) (''[[The Desperate Man (novel)|The Desperate Man]]'' translated into English by Richard Robinson. Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-237-2}}, 2023)
* ''[[The Woman Who Was Poor|La Femme pauvre]]'' (1897) (''The Woman Who Was Poor'' translated into English by I. J. Collins. St. Augustines Press, {{ISBN|978-1-89031-892-5}}, 2015)

===Essays===
* "Le Révélateur du Globe: Christophe Colomb & Sa Béatification Future" (1884) (In English translation: "The Revealer of the Globe: Christopher Columbus and His Future Beatification" (Part One). Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-205-1}}, 2021)
* "Propos d'un entrepreneur de démolitions" (1884) ("Words of a Demolitions Contractor" translated into English by Richard Robinson. Sunny Lou Publishing Company, {{ISBN|978-1-73547-763-3}}, 2020)
* "Un Brelan d'excommuniés" (1889)
* "Le Salut par les Juifs" (1892) ("Salvation through the Jews" translated into English by Richard Robinson. Sunny Lou Publishing Company, {{ISBN|978-1-73547-762-6}}, 2020)
* "Léon Bloy devant les cochons" (1894)
* "Ici on assassine les grands hommes" (1895) ("Great Men Are Slain Here," in English translation by Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-275-4}}, 2025)
* "Je m'accuse" (1900) ("I accuse myself"), in response to Émile Zola's 1898 open letter ''[[J'Accuse…!]]'' (''Je M'Accuse...'' translated into English by Richard Robinson. Sunny Lou Publishing Company, {{ISBN|978-0-57872-982-4}}, 2020)
* "Le Fils de Louis XVI" (1900) ("The Son of Louis XVI", in English translation. Sunny Lou Publishing {{ISBN|978-1-95539-222-8}}, 2022)
* "Exégèse des lieux communs" (1902–12) ("Exegesis of the Commonplaces", translated into English by Louis Cancelmi. Wiseblood Books {{ISBN|978-1-95131-991-5}}, 2021)
* "Belluaires et porchers" (1905) ("Gladiators and swineherds")
* "Le Résurrection de Villiers de lʼIsle-Adam" (1906) ("The Resurrection of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam", in English translation. Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-224-2}}, 2022)
* "L'épopée byzantine et Gustave Schlumberger" (1906)
* "Celle qui pleure" (1908) ("She Who Weeps", in English translation and published by Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-212-9}}, 2021)
* "Le Sang du Pauvre" (1909) ("Blood of the Poor", translated into English, and published by Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-201-3}}, 2021)
* "L'Ame de Napoléon" (1912) ("The Soul of Napoleon."
** [[Éditions Jérôme Millon]], 2021. 192p. {{ISBN|9782841373918}}.
** In English translation: Sunny Lou Publishing Company, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-200-6}}, 2021)
* "Sur la Tombe de Huysmans" (1913) <ref>"Sur la Tombe de Huysmans" is available via [http://gallicalabs.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k113902s/f5.image Bibliothèque nationale de France] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402221447/http://gallicalabs.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k113902s/f5.image |date=2 April 2015 }}.</ref> (In English translation: ''On Huysmans' Tomb: Critical reviews of J.-K. Huysmans and À Rebours, En Rade, and Là-Bas.'' Sunny Lou Publishing Company, 2021)
* "Jeanne d'Arc et l'Allemagne" (1915) ("Joan of Arc and Germany."
** [[Éditions Jérôme Millon]], 2016. 176p. {{ISBN|9782841373246}}.
** In English translation: Sunny Lou Publishing Company, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-206-8}}, 2021)
* "Constantinople et Byzance" (1917) ("Constantinople and Byzantium."
** [[Éditions Jérôme Millon]], 2025. 176p. {{ISBN|9782841374335}}.
** In English translation: Sunny Lou Publishing Company, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-231-0}}, 2022)

===Short stories===
* ''Sueur de sang'' (1893) ("Sweating blood" In English translation: Wakefield Press, {{ISBN|978-1-93966-317-7}}, 2016)
* ''[[Histoires désobligeantes]]'' (1894) (''Disagreeable tales'')

===Diaries===
* ''Le Mendiant ingrat'' (1898) ("The Ungrateful Beggar," Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-274-7}}, 2025.)
* ''Mon Journal'' (1904) ("My Journal: 1896-1900," Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-955392-86-0}}, 2026.)
* ''Quatre ans de captivité à Cochons-sur-Marne'' (1905) ("Four Years of Captivity in Cochons-sur-Marne: 1900-1904," Sunny Lou Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-234-1}}, 2022.)
* ''L'Invendable'' (1909) ("The Unsaleable")
* ''Le Vieux de la montagne'' (1911) ("The Old Man from the Mountain")
* ''Le Pèlerin de l'Absolu'' (1914) ("The Pilgrim of the Absolute", edited by David Bentley Hart. Cluny Media, LLC, {{ISBN|978-1-94441-847-2}}, 2017)
* ''Au seuil de l'Apocalypse'' (1916) ("On the Threshold of the Apocalypse." In English translation: Sunny Lou Publishing Company, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-211-2}}, 2021.)
* ''Méditations d'un solitaire en 1916'' (1917) ("Meditations of a Solitary in 1916," Sunny Lou Publishing Company, {{ISBN|978-1-95539-238-9}}, 2023.)
* ''La Porte des humbles'' (posth., 1920) ("The Door of the Lowly")

A study in English is ''Léon Bloy'' by [[Rayner Heppenstall]] (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1953).

===Quotations===
* "Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."{{r|Auden & Kronenberger}}
* "There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kreeft |first1=Peter |title=Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church |url=https://archive.org/details/catholicchristia00kree |url-access=registration |date=2001 |publisher=Ignatius Press|isbn=9780898707984 }}</ref>
* "But I love Paris, which is the place of intelligence, and I feel Paris threatened by this [[Eiffel Tower|truly tragic lampstand]] sprouting from its belly, which will be visible at night from twenty leagues away ..."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://passerelles.bnf.fr/lire/eiffel_04.php|title = La Tour Eiffel}}</ref>
* “The rich man is an inexorable brute whom one is forced to stop with a pitchfork or a round of grapeshot in the belly...”<ref name="blood-of-the-poor">{{cite book |last1=Bloy |first1=Léon |title=Blood of the Poor |date=2021 |publisher=Sunny Lou Publishing}}</ref>
* “And they [rich Catholics] dare to speak of charity, to pronounce the word Caritas which is the very Name of the divine Third Person! Prostitution of words enough to put fear in the devil! That beautiful lady, who does not have the honesty even to surrender her body to the poor souls whom she arouses, will go, this very evening, to show all that she can of her white, sepulchral flesh where jewels like worms quiver, and make herself worshipped by imbeciles, on supposed feast days of charity, on the occasion of some disaster, to fatten the sharks or shipwreckers a little more. The so-called Christian riches ejaculating on misery!” {{r|blood-of-the-poor}}
* "All that happens in life is adorable."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bloy |first1=Léon |title=The Ungrateful Beggar (The Author's Journal: 1892-1895) |url=https://sunnyloupublishing.com |date=2025 |publisher=Sunny Lou Publishing |isbn=978-1-95539-274-7}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Three Versions of Judas]] by [[Jorge Luis Borges]]

==References==
{{Reflist|refs=
<ref name="Alter-Gilbert">
{{cite web
|last = Alter-Gilbert
|first = Gilbert
|title = Léon Bloy: Pilgrim of the Absolute
|date = 9 December 2008
|url = https://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2008/12/leon-bloy-pilgrim-of-absolute-by.html
}}
</ref>
<ref name="Auden & Kronenberger">
{{cite book
|last1 = Auden
|first1 = W.H.
|last2 = Kronenberger
|first2 = Louis
|title = The Viking Book of Aphorisms
|date = 1966
|publisher = Viking Press
|location = New York
}}
</ref>
<ref name=Bermudez>
{{cite news
|last = Bermudez
|first = Alejandro
|title = A Pope Who Quotes Bloy
|date = 15 March 2013
|newspaper = [[Catholic News Agency]]
|url = https://jean2010.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/a-pope-who-quotes-bloy/
}}
</ref>
<ref name=Connelly>
{{cite book
|last = Connelly
|first = John
|author-link = John Connelly (historian)
|title = From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965
|date = 2012
|publisher = Harvard University Press
}}
</ref>
<ref name=Eyzaguirre>
{{Cite web
|title = Jaime Eyzaguirre (1908–1968)
|work = [[Memoria Chilena]]
|publisher = [[Biblioteca Nacional de Chile]]
|url = https://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-656.html
|access-date = 30 December 2015
|language = es
}}
</ref>
<ref name=Kaufmann>
{{cite book
|last = Kaufmann
|first = Suzanne K.
|title = Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine
|publisher = Cornell University Press
|date = 2005
|isbn = 9780801442483
|page = 86
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=cng49eP-hdwC&pg=PA86
}}
</ref>
<ref name=Robb>
{{cite book
|last = Robb
|first = Graham
|title = Victor Hugo
|year = 1997
|publisher = Picador
|location = London
|page = 533
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=kU9LloPylhQC&pg=PA533
|isbn = 9780393318999
}}
</ref>
<ref name=Sheed>
{{cite book
|last = Sheed
|first = F.J.
|author-link = Frank Sheed
|title = Sidelights on the Catholic Revival
|location = New York
|publisher = Sheed and Ward
|date = 1940
|page = 181
}}
</ref>
<ref name="Quotations in Williams">
{{cite web
|title = Quotations from Léon Bloy in "Charles Williams: The New Christian Year"
|date = 1 November 2007
|access-date = 21 July 2014
|url = http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchristianyear/lon_bloy/
}}
</ref>
<ref name=Ziegler>
{{cite journal
|last=Ziegler
|first=Robert
|title=The Palimpsest of Suffering: Léon Bloy's ''Le Désespéré''
|journal=[[Neophilologus]]
|doi=10.1007/s11061-012-9337-x
|volume=97
|issue=4
|pages=653–662
|date=October 2013
|s2cid=170245435
}}
</ref>
}}

==Sources==
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book
|last = Bloy
|first = Léon (Ed. [[Raissa Maritain]]
|title = Pilgrim of the Absolute
|year = 1947
|publisher = Pantheon Books
|location = New York
|url = https://archive.org/details/pilgrimofabsolut0000bloy_p2h9
|url-access = registration
}}
{{refend}}
*
[[Rayner Heppenstall]] 'Léon Bloy', (1953) Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge. (1954) Yale University Press, New Haven.

==External links==
* {{Gutenberg author |id=37756| name=Léon Bloy}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Léon Bloy}}

{{History of Catholic theology}}
{{Subject bar |portal=Biography |portal2=Catholicism |portal3=Christianity |portal4=France |portal5=Poetry |commons=yes |commons-search=Category:Léon Bloy |q=yes |d=yes |d-search=Q462666}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloy, Leon}}
[[Category:1846 births]]
[[Category:1917 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century French essayists]]
[[Category:19th-century French diarists]]
[[Category:19th-century French letter writers]]
[[Category:19th-century French male novelists]]
[[Category:19th-century French poets]]
[[Category:19th-century Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:20th-century French essayists]]
[[Category:20th-century French diarists]]
[[Category:20th-century French letter writers]]
[[Category:20th-century French novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century French male novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century French poets]]
[[Category:20th-century Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:Activists against antisemitism]]
[[Category:Christian apologists]]
[[Category:Christian novelists]]
[[Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism]]
[[Category:French Catholic poets]]
[[Category:French critics of atheism]]
[[Category:French former atheists and agnostics]]
[[Category:French male essayists]]
[[Category:19th-century French male poets]]
[[Category:French people of Spanish descent]]
[[Category:French political commentators]]
[[Category:French Roman Catholic writers]]
[[Category:Our Lady of La Salette]]
[[Category:People from Périgueux]]
[[Category:20th-century French male poets]]

Léon Bloy - Revision history

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