AUBÉ, BENJAMIN. - Historian, b. in Paris on 1 Dec. 1826, d. there on 24 June 1887. A professor in several lycées in France: Pau, Angoulême, Reims, Orléans, Versailles and Paris, he exercised his sincere and penetrating intellect above all in the history of the origins and the first centuries of Christianity.
Of his works, the principal ones: Histoire des persécutions de l'Église jusqu'à la fin des Antonins (Paris 1825); Histoire des persécutions de l'Église: 2e série, La polémique païenne à la fin du IIe siècle (ibid. 1877); L'empire romain de la fin des Antonins au milieu du IIIe siècle (ibid. 1881); L'Église et l'État dans la seconde moitié du IIIe siècle, 249-84 (ibid. 1885) were placed on the Index (respectively: decr. 15 Dec. 1882; 18 May 1883; 25 June 1886). E. Renan gives this judgment of the author and the works: «Reading his first essays, one might have been tempted to believe that the persecutions were a trifling matter, that in reality the number of martyrs was not notable and that the whole of ecclesiastical history, on this point, was an artificial construction» (Journal des savants, Paris 1874, p. 697). He succeeded, however, little by little in withdrawing ever more from Dodwell's theory on the small number of martyrs, accepted at first too hastily; and he contributed to having it rejected.
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Celestino Testoro