HARDOUIN, JEAN, better known as PERE HARDOUIN, one of the most learned, and at the same time most singular men whose names are to be found in the history of letters, was born at Quimper, in Brittany, in 1646. His youth gave little promise of his future distinction, and it was with difficulty that he was admitted into the order of
the Jesuits. After the usual preliminaries he went to Hardwick, Paris to complete his theological studies. He there undertook to edit the Natural History of Pliny for the series of the Delphin Classics. In trying to determine the positions of the towns mentioned by Pliny, he became sensible that a knowledge of medals would assist him in clearing up different points of ancient geography; and with this view he immediately applied to the study of numismatics, in which he soon rendered himself profound. His edition of Pliny was completed in five years, and, when it appeared, made his name known to all Europe. This work, which, according to Huet, would have occupied any five ordinary scholars fifty years, met with so flattering a reception, that Father Hardouin could not enjoy his success with moderation. The commendations which poured in upon him from all quarters intoxicated him with pride; and he no longer spoke of other antiquaries, except with the utmost contempt. The latter in their turn depreciated his merits, and exaggerated his faults. Hardouin replied with bitterness, and at length had recourse to the wildest paradoxes in his attempt at self-defence. In one of his works, La Chronologie expliquée par les Médailles, he ventured to maintain that ancient history had been entirely recomposed by the monks of the thirteenth century, and that the only genuine remains of Latin antiquity were the works of Cicero and Pliny, the Georgics of Virgil, and the satires and epistles of Horace. In 1708 his ecclesiastical superiors compelled him to retract this opinion, but his retraction made no real change in his views. He died at Paris, September 3, 1729, in the eighty-third year of his age. His principal works are:
Nummi antiqui Populorum et Urbium illustrati, de re monetaria veterum Romanorum ex Plinii Secundi sententia, Paris, 1684, in 4to; Antirheticus de Nummis antiquis Coloniae et Municipiorum ad Jo. Foy-Vaillant, ibid. 1689, in 4to; C. Plinii Secundi Historiae Naturalis, libri xxxvii., Paris, 1689, in five vols. 4to; S. Joannis Chrysostomi Epistola ad Cæsarium monachum, notis illustrata, Paris, 1686, in 4to; Chronologia ex Nummis antiquis restituta specimen primum, Paris, 1696, in 4to; Opera Selecta, Amsterdam, 1709, 1719, in folio; Conciliorum Collectio Regia Maximo, Paris, 1715 and the following years; Apologie d'Houët, où l'on explique le véritable dessein de l'Élide, et la Théo-mythologie, Paris, 1716, in 12mo; Opera Varia Pothosina, Amsterdam, 1753, in folio; Commentarius in Novum Testamentum, Amsterdam, 1742, in folio; Prolegomena ad censuram Scriptorum veterum, London, 1766, in 8vo; and a very great number of Dissertations, chiefly on Medals, in the Memoirs de Treveux.