AUBIGNE, JEAN HENRI MERLE D' (1794-1872), Swiss Protestant divine and historian of the Reformation, was born on Aug. 6, 1794, at Eaux Vives, Geneva. The ancestors of his father, Aime Robert Merle d'Aubigne (1755-1799), were French Protestant refugees. Educated in Germany, he was pastor of the French Protestant Church in Hamburg for some years, and in 1823 a pastor in Brussels. He was at this time president of the consistory of French Protestant Churches, and subse quently professor of Church history in a Swiss institution main tained by the Evangelical Alliance. He died in Switzerland in 1872. His principal works are :—Discours sur l'etude de l'histoire de Christianisme (Geneva, 1832) ; Le Lutheranisme et la Re f orme (Paris, 1844) ; Germany, England and Scotland, or Recollections of a Swiss Pastor (London, 1848) ; Trois siecles de lutte en Ecosse, ou deux rois et deux royaumes (1850) ; Le Protecteur on la repu blique d'Angleterre aux fours de Cromwell (Paris, 1848) ; Le Con cile et l'in f aillibilite (18 70) ; Histoire de la Reformation aux X V l ieme siecle (Paris, 1835-53 ; new ed. 1861-62, in 5 vols.) ; and Histoire de la Reformation en Europe au temps de Calvin (8 vols. The first portion of his Histoire de la Reformation, which was devoted to the earlier period of the movement in Germany, was translated into most European languages. The second portion, dealing with reform in the time of Calvin, dealt with a subject hitherto less exhaustively treated, but it did not meet with the same success. This part was all but completed at the time of his death. Among his minor treatises, the most important are the vindication of the character and aims of Oliver Cromwell, and a sketch of the struggles in the Church of Scotland.
Aubigne had amassed a wealth of well-documented information; but his desire to give in all cases a full and graphic picture, as sisted by a vivid imagination, betrayed him now and then into filling up a narrative by inference from later conditions. More over, in his profound sympathy with the Reformers, he is often an apologist rather than an impartial historian. But his work is a monument of painstaking sincerity, and brings us into direct contact with the spirit of the period.