BOCCHART, SAMUEL. - French Protestant pastor and illustrator of the natural history of the Bible, born at Rouen on 30 May 1599, died at Caen on 16 May 1667.
Having received his first instruction from his father, a pastor at Rouen, he went on to complete his studies in Paris (1613), then in Sedan for philosophy, in Saumur for theology, in Oxford for textual criticism, and in Leiden for Semitic languages under the renowned Arabist Erpenius. Returning to France, he became pastor at Caen and remained there until his death. He spent a year in Stockholm (1652), summoned thither by Christina of Sweden, accompanied by D. Huet (q.v.), and there studied 13 Arabic manuscripts. His first major work, in two parts, the fruit of twenty years of study, is *Geographia sacra*, which includes *I. Phaleg* (or *De dispersione gentium et terrarum divisione facta in aedificatione*) and *I. A. Károli, B. szerete a történetben* (B.’s role in history), Budapest 1898; G. Lenze, *Der Aufstand B. u. der Wiener Friede*, Debreczen 1917; N. Asztalos-A. Pethő, *Storia dell’Ungheria*, Milan 1937, pp. 250-54.
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