BOST, AMI-ISAAC-DAVID. - Protestant writer, b. Geneva in 1780, d. Laforec in 1874. At twenty-four he was ordained to the Calvinist ministry. Influenced by the so-called “theology of awakening” as shaped by Neander and Tholuck, B. became an evangelist and minister in various independent communities, this being due to his unpopularity with the Geneva consistory because in a publication he had reproached the national Church with violating the “Ecclesiastical Ordinances” then in force.
A man of artistic temperament, he composed sacred hymns still in use in Reformed worship; he translated works of ecclesiastical history and, on his own account, wrote an *Histoire des Frères de Bohème et de Moravie* (Geneva 1834) and *Mémoires pouvant servir à l'histoire religieuse des Églises prot. de la Suisse et de la France* (2 vols., ibid. 1854–56).
He died at Laforec—a hamlet in the Dordogne—at the home of his son John (1817–89), who had founded there, with the zeal of a Cottolengo, the celebrated “Asili di Laforec” for orphaned idiots and epileptics, which still flourish today.