Joseph-Pierre Louis David was the son of Joseph Pierre David and Euphanie de la Combe but the various biographical accounts tell us nothing about the socio-economic status of his family. After completing his secondary studies at the La Côte (Saint-André) Seminary, he enrolled in 1899 in the University of Grenoble, the capital of the department where he was born. There he studied Medieval History and Provençal Literature, later transferring to the Sorbonne where he graduated in Letters in 1900. He was a student of the great masters, Paul Fournier and Ulysses Chevalier. In 1903 he entered the Grenoble Theological Seminary, but this was closed in 1905 as a result of the Law on the Separation of Church and State. As he was the librarian, Pierre David managed to save some notable works from being pillaged. In 1905 he went to the Gregorian University of Rome, where he completed his ecclesiastical training, taking courses in Philosophy, Theology, Canon Law and Holy Scripture.

After having been ordained to the priesthood (1908, St. John Lateran), he continued his education in the École Française of Rome, run at that time by the famous linguist and historian Monseigneur Louis Duchesne, whose student he was. He also attended the University of Rome, where he was a student of Ignazio Guidi, the renowned orientalist and Hebraist. He frequented the libraries of Rome, in particular the Vatican Library, while at the same time furthering his education in ecclesiastical history, liturgy, medieval Latin and literature, Christian archaeology and oriental languages, especially Arabic, Coptic and Hebrew. He finished his doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1912. In the meantime, he had been appointed Chaplain of St. Louis of the French (Rome) in 1908.

The final years of his training with Duchesne and Guidi, as well as with Wladimir de Grüneisen, Christien Huelsen and Vicenzo Federici, were also ones when he collaborated on their works and projects. His abilities in liturgy and religious archaeology quickly became known and recognised, and so he was asked to be part of the first commission charged by Pope Pius X to reform the Breviary. He also collaborated on the important monograph on the Church of Santa Maria Antiqua, built in the Roman Forum (Sainte-Marie Antique, edited by Christian Huelsen and Vicenzo Federici, Roma, 1911). His collaboration, entitled “Étude liturgique et hagiographique”, was his first work of a historical nature with an exact date, although the publication of Coptic texts in the Revue Biblique (founded by Father Lagrange and edited by the École Pratique d’Études Bibliques in Jerusalem) and in the Revue de l’ Orient Chrétien could have been earlier.

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