AUDIN, JEAN-MARIE-VINCENT. - French man of letters and publisher, b. at Lyon in 1793 and d. in 1851. Among his writings, almost all of a historical-literary character, such as Michel Morin et la Ligue (1817), Essai sur le romantique (1823), Le Concordat entre Léon X et François I (1821), etc., special mention should be made of the Histoire de la saint Barthélemy (1812), which aroused lively controversy in ecclesiastical circles because it was judged
too favorable to the Protestant thesis, so much so that the A. deemed it necessary publicly to reaffirm his attachment to the doctrines of the Catholic Church. But his principal work, which won him renown, is that concerning the Protestant Reformation, published in four distinct parts: 1) Histoire de la vie, des ouvrages et des doctrines de Luther (1839); 2) Histoire de la vie, des ouvrages et des doctrines de Calvin (1841); 3) Histoire de Léon X et de son siècle (1844); 4) Histoire de Henri VIII et du schisme d'Angleterre (1847). This work has now been superseded by more recent Catholic historiography.