AUBÉ, BENJAMIN. - Historian, b. in Paris on 1 Dec. 1826, d. there on 24 June 1887. A teacher in several French lycées—Pau, Angoulême, Reims, Orléans, Versailles, and Paris—he devoted his sincere and penetrating intellect chiefly to the history of the origins and first centuries of Christianity.
Among his principal works, Histoire des persécutions de l'Église jusqu'à la fin des Antonins (Paris 1825); Histoire des persécutions de l'Église: 2e série, La polémique palenne 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: decrees of 15 Dec. 1882; 18 May 1883; 25 June 1886). E. Renan offered this judgment of the author and his works: “On reading his early essays, one might have been tempted to believe that the persecutions were a matter of no consequence, that in reality the number of martyrs was not considerable, and that all ecclesiastical history, on this point, was an artificial construction” (Journal des savants, Paris 1874, p. 697). Gradually, however, he increasingly freed himself from Dodwell’s theory concerning the small number of martyrs, which he had at first accepted too hastily; and he helped to bring about its rejection.