JEAN CLAUDE. — 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 in 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 union between Reformed and Catholics. For this he was forbidden to exercise his ministry 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 centre of Montauban, he accepted the post of minister and professor of theology. After four years he was obliged to leave this city as well and returned to Paris in 1666, accepting charge of the Reformed congregation at Charenton, where he remained until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
The period 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 over the mystery of the Eucharist, the two Jansenists Nicole and Arnaud and Fr. Nouet published some treatises on real presence and transubstantiation; against these C. wrote, attacking them and opposing Calvinist doctrine. The Protestants greatly praised this work, but the writer Jean de Manoir in L'Eucharistie défendue refuted it, using against C. the very arguments he had adopted. At this time C. also wrote the Défense de la Réformation, against Nicole’s book Préjugés légitimes contre les calvinistes; but this, more than a defence 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 justify the Reformation. To this period are also to 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 a fuller account, to which the persistent Calvinist controversialist 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While he was minister at Charenton, the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685: C. therefore took refuge in Holland where he was honourably received by the Prince of Orange, future King of England, who also assigned him a pension; two years later he died at The Hague. But before his death he still wrote in defence of his coreligionists Les plaintes 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 nephew Giovanni Giacomo Claude at Amsterdam in 1688-89.