CLAUDE, JEAN. – Calvinist theologian and polemicist, born at La Sauvetat (Agenois) in 1619, died at The Hague in 1687. The son and grandson of Calvinist pastors, and himself a pastor, he was minister at La Treine in 1645, moving the following year to St-Affrique in the same capacity, and in 1654 to Nîmes, where he also taught theology. At the Calvinist synod of Nîmes in 1661 he opposed the proposal of the governor of Languedoc for union between the Reformed and Catholics. For this reason he was forbidden to exercise his ministry throughout Languedoc, and in the same year he went to Paris to defend his cause; but when invited in 1662 by the Protestants of the important center of Montauban, he accepted the position of minister and professor of theology. Forced, after four years, to withdraw from this city as well, he returned to Paris in 1666 and accepted the pastoral charge of the Reformed congregation of Charenton, where he remained until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
The period of his residence in Montauban and Paris was the most fruitful of his polemical life. On the occasion of the conversion of Marshal Turenne, who had difficulties concerning the mystery of the Eucharist, the two Jansenists Nicole and Arnaud and Fr. Nouet published several treatises on the real presence and transubstantiation; against them C. wrote, attacking them and setting forth the Calvinist doctrine. The Protestants praise this work highly, but the writer Jean de Manoir refutes it in Eucharistie défendue, using against C. the very arguments adopted by him. At this time C. also wrote Défense de la Réformation, against Nicole’s book Prégnégés légitimes contre les calvinistes; but this work, rather than a defense of Calvinism, is a collection of historical data interpreted according to the Calvinist criterion and an enumeration of real or alleged abuses introduced into the Church, elements with which he attempts to legitimize the Reformation. To this period must also be attributed various writings by C. on the state of the Reformed Church in France and the account of his conference with Bossuet; the latter wrote another, more complete account, to which the pertinacious Calvinist polemicist did not fail to reply.
While he was minister at Charenton, the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685; C. therefore took refuge in Holland, where he was honorably received by the Prince of Orange, the future king of England, who also granted him a pension; two years later he died at The Hague. Before his death, however, he wrote once more in defense of his fellow believers, Les Jéguistes des Protestants cruellement opprimés dans le Royaume de France.
Besides the works cited, his other writings—ascetical and theological works and letters—were published in 5 vols. by his nephew Giovanni Giacomo Claude in Amsterdam in 1688–89.