AUGER, EMOND. - One of the most distinguished among the early French Jesuits. Born in Aleman (Champagne) in 1530, he was admitted into the Society in Rome (1550) and formed by St. Ignatius himself. Professor at the Roman College, in Perugia, and in Padua, he returned to France in 1559. He began teaching at Pamiers and Tournon, but soon devoted himself, with incredible zeal and equal success, to preaching and combating heresy in southern France, then plagued by Calvinism. In 1562, captured at Valence by the Huguenots, he narrowly escaped martyrdom. First Provincial of Aquitaine (1564), preacher to King Charles IX, chaplain to the army of the Duke of Anjou, he later became confessor and preacher to the same man, now Henry III, and made use of the great trust the king showed him for the good of the Catholic Church. Authorized only in 1587 to withdraw from court, he was soon afterward forced to leave France because of his opposition to the League; he died at Como on 19 January 1591.
In addition to his role in the development of the Society in France (with the founding of important colleges) and his influence on religious policy, A. distinguished himself by his extraordinary activity as a preacher and controversialist, in comparison with which his literary output, though considerable, must be considered secondary. This includes humanistic works (a school edition of Murmalius, Rome 1558), treatises of controversy against the Calvinists, especially on the doctrine of the Sacraments, occasional ascetical writings (Le Pédagogue d’armes pour un prince chrétien, Paris 1568; consolatory letters for Catholics), and various translations (the first three books of the Initiation to the Christian Life, and the History of the Missions of India by Maffei).
Of great importance is his catechetical work, which earned him the title of “Canisius of France.” The two catechisms, the large one (Sommaire de la doctrine chrétienne, 1563) and the small one (before 1568), published by A. in French and later in Latin (and the small one also in Greek for the colleges), soon spread widely, with many reprints and translations. The Portuguese Jesuit Francisco Antonio published a Latin edition in Madrid (1592), enriched with source texts (as Busco had done for Canisius). Following the same division as the Tridentine catechism (creed, commandments and prayer, Sacraments), Auger’s catechism is less erudite than Canisius’s but, in dialogical form, comes closer to modern catechisms; without entering into polemics, it fully refutes Calvinist heresy. Despite its merits, Auger’s catechism was later replaced, even in the French Jesuit colleges, by Canisius’s and other later catechisms.