Home > Jean Hardouin

Having acquired a taste for literature in his father's book-shop, he sought and obtained about his sixteenth year admission into the order of the Jesuits. In Paris, where he went to study theology, he ultimately became librarian of the College Louis le Grand in 1683, and he died there on the 3rd of September 1729.

His first published work was an edition of Themistius (1684), which included no fewer than thirteen new orations. On the advice of Jean Gamier (1612-1681) he undertook to edit the Natural History of Pliny for the Delphin series, a task which he completed in five years. His attention having been turned to numismatics as auxiliary to his great editorial labours, he published several learned works in that department, marred, however, as almost everything he did was marred, by a determination to be at all hazards different from other interpreters. It is sufficient to mention his Nummi antiqui populorum et urbium illustrati (1684), Antirrheticus de nummis antiquis coloniarum et municipiorum (1689), and Chronologia Veteris Testamenti ad vulgatam versionem exacta et nummis illustrata (1696).

By the ecclesiastical authorities Hardouin was appointed to supervise the Conciliorum collectio regia maxima (1715); but he was accused of suppressing important documents and foisting in apocryphal matter, and by the order of the parlement of Paris (then at war with the Jesuits) the publication of the work was delayed. It is really a valuable collection, much cited by scholars.

Hardouin declared that all the councils supposed to have taken place before the council of Trent were fictitious. It is, however, as the originator of a variety of paradoxical theories that Hardouin is now best remembered. The most remarkable, contained in his Chronologiae ex nummis antiquis restitutae (1696) and Prolegomena ad censuram veterum scriptorum, was to the effect that, with the exception of the works of Homer, Herodotus and Cicero, the Natural History of Pliny, the Georgics of VirgilFor other uses see Virgil (disambiguation). Publius Vergilius Maro ( October 15, 70 19 BC) known in English as Virgil or Vergil Latin poet, is the author of the Eclogues the Georgics and the Aeneid this last being a narrative poem in twelve books that is, and the Satires and Epistles of HoraceQuintus Horatius Flaccus ( December 8, 65 BC 8 BC) known in the English world as Horace was the leading lyric poet in Latin. Horace was the son of a freedman, but himself born free. His father spent considerable money on Horace's education, sending him to, all the ancient classics of Greece and Rome were spurious, having been manufactured by monks of the 13th century12th century 13th century 14th century other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 13th century was that century which lasted from 1201 to 1300. Events Fourth through eighth crusades of western European kingdoms against Islam Fall of, under the direction of a certain Severus Archontius. He denied the genuineness of most ancient works of art, coins and inscriptions, and declared that the New TestamentThe New Testament sometimes called the Greek Scriptures is the name given to the part of the Christian Bible that was written after the birth of Jesus Christ. The term is a translation of the Latin Novum Testamentum which translates the Greek Η &Kappa was originally written in Latin.

See A Debacker, Bibliothèque des écrivains de la Compagnie de Jesus (1853).

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica