Jean Hardouin ( en, John Hardwin; la, Johannes Harduinus; 1646 – 3 September 1729), was a
French classical scholar. He is most known for his theory that most texts from Antiquity were forgeries.
Biography
He was born at
Quimper
Quimper (, ; br, Kemper ; la, Civitas Aquilonia or ) is a commune and prefecture of the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France.
Administration
Quimper is the prefecture (capital) of the Finistère department.
Geography
The ...
in
Brittany
Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period ...
. Having acquired a taste for literature in his father's book-shop, he sought and obtained admission into the order of the
Jesuits
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders = ...
in around 1662 (when he was 16). In
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, where he went to study
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing t ...
. He ultimately became librarian of the
Lycée Louis-le-Grand
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand (), also referred to simply as Louis-le-Grand or by its acronym LLG, is a public Lycée (French secondary school, also known as sixth form college) located on rue Saint-Jacques in central Paris. It was founded in the ...
in 1683, and he died there.
His first published work was an edition of
Themistius
Themistius ( grc-gre, Θεμίστιος ; 317 – c. 388 AD), nicknamed Euphrades, (eloquent), was a statesman, rhetorician, and philosopher. He flourished in the reigns of Constantius II, Julian, Jovian, Valens, Gratian, and Theodosius I; and ...
(1684), which included no fewer than thirteen new orations. On the advice of
Jean Garnier (1612–1681) he undertook to edit the ''Natural History'' of
Pliny for the
Dauphin series, a task which he completed in five years. Aside from editorial work, he became interested in
numismatics
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals and related objects.
Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also includ ...
, and published several learned works on this subject, all marked by a determination to be different from other interpreters. His works on this topic include: ''Nummi antiqui populorum et urbium illustrati'' (1684), ''Antirrheticus de nummis antiquis coloniarum et municipiorum'' (1689), and ''Chronologia Veteris Testamenti ad vulgatam versionem exacta et nummis illustrata'' (1696).
Ideology
Hardouin was appointed by the ecclesiastical authorities to supervise the ''Conciliorum collectio regia maxima'' (1715); but he was accused of suppressing important documents and including apocryphal ones, and by the order of the ''
parlement
A ''parlement'' (), under the French Ancien Régime, was a provincial appellate court of the Kingdom of France. In 1789, France had 13 parlements, the oldest and most important of which was the Parlement of Paris. While both the modern Fr ...
'' of Paris (then in conflict with the Jesuits) the publication of the work was delayed. After his death a collection of works ''Opera varia'' appeared in Amsterdam 1733.
It is, however, as the originator of a variety of unorthodox theories that Hardouin is now best remembered. The most remarkable, contained in his ''Chronologiae ex nummis antiquis restitutae'' (1696) and ''Prolegomena ad censuram veterum scriptorum'', was to the effect that, with the exception of the works of
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the '' Iliad'' and the '' Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of ...
,
Herodotus
Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria (Italy). He is known for ...
and
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
, the ''Natural History'' of
Pliny, the ''Georgics'' of
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
, and the ''Satires'' and ''Epistles'' of
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ...
, all the ancient classics of Greece and Rome were spurious, having been manufactured by monks of the 13th century, under the direction of a certain
Severus Archontius by whom he might have meant
Frederick II. He denied the genuineness of most ancient works of art, coins and inscriptions, and declared that the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...
was originally written in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
, as he underlined with good reasoning in his short work ''Prolegomena'' which appeared in the year he died, 1729. The ''Prolegomena'' were translated by
Edwin Johnson and published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1909, with a noteworthy preface of Edward A. Petherick.
Although Hardouin has been called "pathological", he was only an extreme example of a general critical trend of his time, following authors like
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, ...
,
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influent ...
or
Jean Daillé, who had started to identify and discard mistaken attributions or datings of medieval documents or Church writings
Hardouin also perceived anachronisms in Dante's
Purgatorio
''Purgatorio'' (; Italian for "Purgatory") is the second part of Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', following the ''Inferno'' and preceding the '' Paradiso''. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of Da ...
, in notes published in Paris 1727, which was edited with an English commentary in London 1847 by C. F. Molini.
Hardouins Zweifel zu Dante
by Uwe Topper, in CronoLogo, 2011 The historian Isaac-Joseph Berruyer had his ''Histoire du peuple de Dieu'' condemned for having followed this theory, which has a modern heir in the Russian mathematician Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, whose conclusions being based on proprietary methods of statistical textual analysis and computational astronomy are even more radical, but considered to be pseudoscientific
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable clai ...
.
References
Further reading
* Augustin de Backer, ''Bibliothèque des écrivains de la Compagnie de Jesus'' (1853).
English Translation of The ''Prolegomena''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hardouin, Jean
1646 births
1729 deaths
French classical scholars
17th-century French Jesuits
18th-century French Jesuits
Writers from Quimper
Pseudohistorians
Proponents of alternative chronologies
17th-century Latin-language writers
18th-century Latin-language writers