In 1905, aged eighty, Oppert died. His last years, darkened by near-blindness, had been marked by his bitterness towards the younger Assyriologists, with the exception of Charles Fossey, who had all his favors. Hissuccession was opened at the Faculty Assembly on November 5; they voted to maintain the chair under the unchanged title of "Assyrian philology and archaeology". The Administrator received five letters from candidates whose titles and works were examined at the Assembly of December 17, 1905: in alphabetical order, they were Charles Fossey, Joseph Halévy, Vincent Scheil, François Thureau-Dangin and Charles Virolleaud. In the first round, Fr. Scheil won an absolute majority (21 votes out of 38), while Ch. Fossey was placed in the "second line" by 23 voters. At its meeting on Friday December 29, the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres partially confirmed the vote of the Collège de France: it placed Scheilfirst with 26 votes out of 33, but it was Thureau-Dangin who was placed second, by 19 votes to Fossey's 14.
The election of V. Scheil, a Dominican, to the front of the line at the Collège de France, and his confirmation by the Académie, caused a terrible stir in the radical camp: it should be remembered that on July 7, 1904, Council President Émile Combes had promulgated a law banning teaching by religious congregations, and above all that the "law concerning the Separation of Church and State", which he had prepared, had just been promulgated on December 9, 1905, by the Maurice Rouvier cabinet. Hencethe question on everyone's mind: was Minister J.-B. Bienvenu-Martin going to appoint a religious professor at the Collège de France? Clémenceau opened the hostilities with a two-column article on the front page of L'Aurore on Saturday December 30, 1905, under the headline "Saint Dominique au Collège de France". But among the professors at the Collège, certain freethinkers like Berthelot had taken up the cause of the man Clémenceau referred to as "the monk". As for Gabriel Monod, President of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, he went to the Ministry to protest against the smear campaign against one of his professors, P. Scheil. The two sideswere constantly replying to each other in the press.
