Hardonin

Hardonin, JEAN, an eccentric classical scholar, was born in 1646, at Quimper, in Brittany, entered the Jesuit order at the age of twenty, and from 1683 filled the post of librarian of the college of Louis le Grand in Paris. In a spirit of eccentric scepticism, Hardonin maintained that the entire body of classical literature, with the exception of Cicero's writings, Pliny's Natural History, Virgil's Georgics, Horace's Satires and Epistles, Homer's Iliad, and Herodotus's History, was spurious, and had been written by the monks of the 13th century. He also rejected all the reputed remains of ancient art, together with the inscriptions and coins which are attributed to classical times; nay, he even extended his scepticism to the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, and to the Greek text of the New, the original language of which he held to have been Latin! Besides this, he condemned as apocryphal all councils of the Church anterior to the Council of Trent. Yet, with all this extravagance, Hardonin was a scholar of real attainments, and most of his works possess historical and critical value, particularly his edition of Pliny (5 vols. 4to, Paris, 1689). Of his remaining works, the most valuable is the Collectio Conciliorum (12 vols. folio, Paris, 1715); a commentary on the New Testament, in folio; and several volumes on numismatics and chronology. He died at Paris, September 3, 1729.