CLAUDE, JEAN. - Calvinist theologian and polemicist, b. at La Sauvetat (Agenois) in 1619, d. at The Hague in 1687. 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 with the same office 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 a union between Reformed and Catholics. For this the exercise of his ministry was forbidden him throughout Languedoc, and in the same year he went to Paris to defend his cause; but invited in 1662 by the Protestants of the important center of Montauban, he accepted the post of minister and professor of theology. Obliged, after 4 years, to withdraw from this city as well, he returned to Paris in 1666 and accepted the cure of the group of Reformed at Charenton, where he remained until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
The time of his stay at Montauban and Paris was the most fruitful of his polemical life. On the occasion of the conversion of Marshal Turenne, who had difficulties regarding the mystery of the Eucharist, the two Jansenists Nicole and Arnauld and Fr. Nouet published certain treatises on the real presence and on transubstantiation; against them C. wrote, attacking them and setting forth Calvinist doctrine. Protestants praise this work highly, but the writer Jean de Manoir in the Eucharistie défendue refutes it, making use against C. of the very arguments adopted by him. C. also wrote at this time the Défense de la Réformation, against Nicole's book Prégnégés légitimes contre les calvinistes; but that work, more than a defense of Calvinism, is a collection of historical data interpreted according to the Calvinist criterion and an enumeration of true or alleged abuses introduced into the Church, elements with which he attempts to legitimize the Reformation. To this time must also be attributed various writings of C. on the state of the Reformed Church in France and the account of his conference with Bossuet; the latter wrote another, more complete one, which the pertinacious Calvinist polemicist did not fail to rebut.
While he was minister at Charenton, the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685: wherefore C. took refuge in Holland, where he was received with honor by the Prince of Orange, the future King of England, who also assigned him a pension; two years later he died at The Hague. But before dying he wrote once more in defense of his coreligionists, Les Jéguistes des Protestants cruellement opprimés dans le Royaume de France.
Besides the works cited, his other writings, ascetical, theological and letters, were published in 5 vols. by his grandson Giovanni Giacomo Claude at Amsterdam in 1688-89.
Bibliography3 works
Camillo Crivelli