ALLARD, PAUL. – French historian, born in Rouen on 15 September 1841, died at Senneville-sur-Mer in December 1916. He completed his literary studies at the Join-Lambert Institute, then moved to Paris, where he took a degree in law. From 1861 to 1868 he undertook a series of journeys through various European countries, visiting Italy in 1863. On arriving in Rome, he began to take a particular interest in Christian antiquities, under the guidance of G. B. De Rossi, already famous for his discoveries in the Roman catacombs. A few years later A. published a French reworking of De Rossi’s Roma sotterranea cristiana (Paris 1872; 2nd ed., with additions, 1873); but his activity as a Church historian began in 1864 with a study (A propos d'un autel peint par M. Dupuy-Delaroche dans l'église Saint-Godard de Rouen, in the Revue de Normandie) that revealed his vocation for the study of the period of Christian origins.
His numerous subsequent volumes and articles on Christian antiquity and hagiography show him to have been a tenacious representative of the conservative tendency, which seeks to recover possible traces of historical truth in legendary narratives. His studies on social problems contributed, in keeping with the spirit of the age, to a rehabilitation of the Church in this field. His principal work is the Histoire des persécutions, from the 1st century to Diocletian (5 vols., Paris 1885–90; 3rd ed. 1902–1908, and, of vol. I, 4th ed. 1910; Italian translation by E. Lari, Florence 1914 ff.), rightly considered the first systematic work on the subject; even today, despite the considerable progress of archaeological and hagiographical scholarship, it retains its value as a forceful account of the struggle waged by the Church against the Roman Empire during the first three centuries of its existence. Also noteworthy are his Julien l'Apostat (3 vols., Paris 1900–1902); the Dix leçons sur le martyre, delivered at the Catholic Institute of Paris from February to April 1905; and above all the entry Martyre published in the Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique, III, Paris 1916, cols. 334–492, which may be regarded as a genuine treatise on the subject.