MORIN, Jean, or, in Latin, Joannes Morinus (1591- 1659), the most learned Catholic theologian of his time and one of the founders of Biblical criticism, was born in 1591 at Blois of Protestant parents, acquired Latin and Greek at Rochelle, and continued his studies at Leyden. Immersed in Biblical and patristic lore, he began to waver in his Protestantism, and moved to Paris, where he made many friends in literary circles, particularly Cardinal Du Perron, to whom his conversion to Catholicism is ascribed. In 1618 he joined the recently formed Parisian Oratory, where he could give himself to quiet study, and in due course took priest’s orders. In 1625 he visited England in the train of Henrietta Maria, and in 1640 he was at Rome, on the invitation of Cardinal Barberini, and was received with special favour by Pope Urban VIII., who employed him on the commission for forwarding his project of union with the Eastern Church. He was, however, soon recalled to Paris by Richelieu, and the rest of his life was spent among books in incessant literary labour, his health, memory, and intellectual vigour remaining unimpaired even in old age. His pen sometimes brought him into trouble. The Histoire de la délivrance de Γ Eglise Chrétienne par l'emp. Constantin, et de la grandeur et souveraineté temporelle donnée a VEglise Romaine par les rois de France (1630) gave great offence at Rome, and a Déclaration (1654), directed against faults in the administration of the Oratory and reflecting on the general (Father Bourgoing), was strictly suppressed. So, too, his great work on penance gave equal offence to the Jesuits and to Port-Royal, and even after his death (1659) the polemical vehemence of his Exercitationes Biblicae, and the exaggeration of his assertion “apud neotericos ...