ABRAM, NICOLAS. - Jesuit humanist and exegete, born at Xaronval in 1589, died at Pont-à-Mousson on 7 December 1655. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1606 and studied at the faculties of Letters and Theology in Pont-à-Mousson, later teaching humanities there. His *Epitome praeceptorum graecorum versibus latinis comprehensorum* (Pont-à-Mousson 1612) went through about fifty editions up to 1645. After eight years of active preaching (1623–30; in 1625 he collaborated with St Peter Fourier), he taught Sacred Scripture for nine years at Pont-à-Mousson (after the French invasion of May 1635, expelled from Lorraine by Richelieu, he returned only in 1643) and for two years at Dijon (1651–53). He left unfinished a history of the University of Pont-à-Mousson (published by Fr. Auguste Carayon, 1870).
A man of vast learning, he employed profane letters and sciences to interpret the Old Testament. Besides commentaries on Cicero’s orations (2 vols. in folio, Paris 1631) and on Virgil (3 vols. in octavo, Pont-à-Mousson 1632–36, with many reprints), still useful today, he published: *Nonni Panopolitani paraphrasis sancti secundum Johannem Evangelii* (Paris 1632) with a Latin verse translation (in which he supplied the story of the adulteress with seventy-three Greek hexameters of his own); in his commentary on Virgil he inserted (1636) the *Diatriba de quattuor fluminibus et loco paradisi* (which he placed in Palestine) to elucidate verse 290 of Book IV of the *Georgics*. His *Epitome rudimentorum linguae hebraicae* (Paris 1645) in Latin verse is likewise ingenious. His principal exegetical work is the *Pharus Veteris Testamenti sive sacrarum quaestionum II. XV* (in folio, Paris 1648), in which he answers objections drawn from the natural and historical-chronological sciences in elegant dialogue form, from the Hexaemeron to the seventy weeks of Daniel. Following the *Pharus* came the *De veritate et mendacio II. IV*, also in dialogue form, on real or apparent falsehoods reported in the Bible. His ascetical work, *Axiomata vitae christianae* (Pont-à-Mousson 1654), enjoyed rapid diffusion.
