AUGER, EMOND. — One of the most distinguished among the first French Jesuits. Born in Aleman (Champagne) in 1539, he was admitted to the Society in Rome (1550) and formed by St. Ignatius himself. Professor at the Roman College, and at Perugia and Padua, he returned to France in 1559. He began teaching at Pamiers and Tournon, but soon devoted himself, with extraordinary zeal and equal success, to preaching and to the struggle against heresy in southern France, then beset by Calvinism. In 1562, captured at Valence by the Huguenots, he narrowly escaped martyrdom. First provincial of Aquitaine (1564), preacher to King Charles IX, and chaplain to the army of the duke of Anjou, he subsequently became confessor and preacher to the latter, who had become Henry III, and used for the good of the Catholic Church the great confidence shown him by the king. Authorized only in 1587 to withdraw from the court, he had shortly afterward to leave France because of his hostility toward the League; he died at Como on 19 January 1591.
In addition to his work for the development of the Society in France (through the foundation of important colleges) and his influence on religious policy, A. distinguished himself through his extraordinary activity as a preacher and controversialist, in comparison with which his literary production, though considerable, may be considered secondary. This includes humanistic works (a scholarly edition of Martial, Rome 1558), treatises of controversy against the Calvinists, especially on the doctrine of the Sacraments, occasional ascetic writings (Le Pédagogne d'armes pour un prince chrétien, Paris 1568; consolatory letters to Catholics), and various translations (the first three books of the Imitation of Christ, Maffei’s History of the Missions of India).
Of great importance is his catechetical work, which earned him the title of “the Canisius of France.” The two catechisms, the larger one (Sommaire de la doctrine chrétienne, 1563) and the smaller one (before 1568), published by A. in French and subsequently in Latin (and the smaller one also in Greek for the colleges), achieved very wide circulation in a short time, with numerous reprints and translations. The Portuguese Jesuit Francesco Antonio published a Latin edition of them in Madrid (1592), enriched with the texts of the sources (as Busco had done for Canisius). Following the same division as the Tridentine catechism (creed, commandments and prayer, Sacraments), A.’s catechism is less erudite than Canisius’s, but, in dialogue form, comes closer to modern catechisms; without entering into polemics, it fully refutes Calvinist heresy. Despite its qualities, A.’s catechism was replaced, after a few decades, even in the colleges of the French Jesuits, by Canisius’s and other later catechisms.