HARDOUIN, JEAN. - French Jesuit scholar, born at Quimper on 22 Dec. 1646, died in Paris on 3 Sept. 1729.
He taught positive theology but devoted himself successfully to many other branches of learning, being considered the most learned man in the Society of Jesus in his time. His doctrinal views brought him dissension and controversy and a condemnation by his religious superiors, which he humbly accepted. Ten years after his death, an Index condemnation struck his Opera selecta and Opera varia (decree of 2 July 1737), published arbitrarily in Amsterdam without the corrections he had made, and his Commentarius in Novum Testamentum (decree of 15 Jan. 1742).
He dealt with topics in history, philology, and archaeology; his memory, however, is particularly tied to sacred studies: a dissertation on Sancti Iohannis Chrysostomi epistula ad Caesarium monachum (Paris 1689), followed by Défense de la lettre de St Chrysostome à Césaire (ibid. 1690), another dissertation on De supremo Domini nostri Paschate (ibid. 1695), a refutation of Anglican ordinations: La défense des Ordinations anglaises refutée (ibid. 1727), and several monographs on biblical exegesis. His major work, however, to which he devoted himself at the request of the French clergy’s Assembly of 1678, is: Acta Conciliorum et epistulae decretales ac constitutiones Summorum Pontificum ab anno 34 ad 1714 (11 vols. in-fol., ibid. 1715), which served as the basis for other great collections.