Touron, Antoine
TOURON, ANTOINE
Historian; b. Graulhet, near Castres, France, Sept. 5, 1686; d. Paris, Sept. 2, 1775. He became a Dominican in Toulouse in 1706, master of novices at St. Dominic's in Paris (c. 1731), and theologian at the Casanate in Rome (1750–51). It seems he spent the rest of his life in Paris. At 50 years of age, he began his studies of the Dominican Order: the lives of St. Thomas and St. Dominic (Paris 1737, 1739) and especially his Histoire des hommes illustres de l'ordre de Saint-Dominique (6 v. Paris
1743–49), still in part a valuable work. Touron then turned to apologetics and attacked the skepticism of Enlightened philosophy in a treatise De la providence (1752), La main de Dieu sur les incrédules, ou histoire abrégée des Israélites (3 v. 1756), and Parallèle de l'incrédule et du vrai fidèle (1756). After La vie et l'esprit de S. Charles Borromée (1761), he undertook his Histoire générale de l'Amérique depuis sa découverte (14 v. 1768–70), based on Spanish works and concerned especially with religious aspects.
Bibliography: a. papillon, "Antoine Touron historiographe dominicain," Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 7 (1937) 320–329.
[a. duval]