Jacques Echard

Echard, Jacques, historian of the Dominicans, b. at Rouen, France, September 22, 1644; d. at Paris, March 15, 1724. As the son of a wealthy official of the king he received a thorough classical and secular education. He entered the Dominican Order at Paris and distinguished himself for his assiduity in study. When Jacques Quaff, who had planned and gathered nearly one-fourth of the material for a literary history of the Dominican Order, died in 1698, Echard was commissioned to complete the work. After much labor and extensive research in most European libraries this monumental history appeared in two quarto volumes under the title "Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum recensiti, notisque historicis illustrati" etc. (Paris, 1721). Besides a sketch, based chiefly on Pignon and Salanac, and a list of each writer's works, with the dates and peculiarities of the various editions, Echard enumerates the unpublished, spurious, and doubtful works, with valuable indications as to their whereabouts. He displays throughout a keen, sane, and incisive criticism which has been highly praised by competent critics (Journal des Savants, LXIX, 574). A new and revised edition was prepared in 1908 by Rémi Coulon, O.P.

THOS. M. SCHWERTNER