Coffin, Charles

Author

b Buzancy, Ardennes, France 1676, d Paris 1749. From 1712 he was principal of the Coll of Dormans-Beauvais, Univ of Paris, and in 1718 he became Rector of the University. Many of his (Lat) hymns appeared in the 1736 Paris Breviary, the RC liturgical book with the cycle of readings and hymns etc. In that year he (?re-)published his own volume with 100 texts. This was the time of a mini-explosion of counterreformation hymnwriting in W Europe in general and France in particular. A collected volume was published posthumously in 1755, and in 1838 J H Newman edited the breviary. Coffin’s main English translators have been John Chandler and Isaac Williams; various edns of A&M have used versions, whole or in part, of 25 of his hymns. No.348.