Dupin, Louis-Éllies

DUPIN, LOUIS-ÉLLIES. - Jansenist theologian and historian, b. in Paris on 17 June 1657, d. on 6 June 1719. A doctor at the Sorbonne and professor at the Collège royal, he published in Paris from 1686 to 1714, in 47 volumes, the Nouvelle bibliothèque des auteurs ecclésiastiques.

The work aroused harsh judgments and was placed on the Index on 1 July 1693 and on 10 May 1757. D. deserved the censures for the doubts he raised about the canonical books, for his contempt for patristic and conciliar tradition, for the denial of the primacy of the Holy See, for his sympathy toward Nestorius, and for errors concerning devotion to the Virgin. Having lost his chair, D. deluded himself that he could reconcile the Catholic Church with the Greek Church by writing to Peter the Great during the latter's stay in Paris, in order to make him an intermediary; he also negotiated with the Archbishop of Canterbury, hoping for the union of the Anglican Church with the Catholic.

Besides the works mentioned, D. composed the Traité de la puissance ecclésiastique et temporelle (1707) and the Traité historique des excommunications (1715), both of them on the Index (decrees of 14 March 1708; 12 Aug. 1716), and various others on religious subjects.