NICOLAS, JEAN-JACQUES-AUGUSTE. – Apologist, born in Bordeaux on 16 January 1807, died in Versailles on 17 January 1888. After an indolent youth, he devoted himself passionately to the study of law at Toulouse (1828). In 1849 Falloux appointed him head of a division in the Ministry of Religious Affairs; in 1854 he was appointed inspector of libraries; from 1850 to 1877 he held various positions in the magistracy.
He became one of the best-known apologists of the nineteenth century through a fortuitous circumstance: when his brother-in-law had lost a son, N. was asked to console him with a writing explaining the intimate grounds of Christian hope. Thus came into being the Etudes philosophiques sur le christianisme (Bordeaux, in installments, 1842, then in 4 vols., 1842–45), which enjoyed extraordinary success (several translations and 26 French editions during the author’s lifetime).
After the unexpected success of his first work, N. devoted himself entirely to the defense of the Catholic faith, writing numerous other works suggested to him by the various currents of thought that coursed through France in the nineteenth century: Du protestantisme et de toutes les hérésies dans leur rapport avec le socialisme, précédé de l'examen d'un écrit de M. Guizot (Paris 1852). To Guizot, who had advocated a coalition of Catholics and Protestants against the danger of nascent socialism, N. replied by showing in Protestantism the deep roots of the error that they wished to combat. In subsequent editions he enriched the volume with important chapters on the individualistic tendency of Protestantism. From 1855 to 1860 appeared the Nouvelles études philosophiques sur le christianisme, which N. composed in fulfillment of a vow to the Madonna; the result was a Mariology of great breadth, destined to exert a wide influence: La Vierge Marie dans le plan divin (Paris 1855); La Vierge Marie dans l'Evangile (ibid. 1857); La Vierge Marie vivant dans l'Eglise (2 vols., ibid. 1860). Against Renan’s Vie de Jésus he wrote the brilliant volume La divalité de Jésus-Christ: démonstration nouvelle tirée des dernières attaques de l'incrédulité (ibid. 1864). Among the many works that he composed with increasing vigor into his advanced old age, one jewel of apologetics in the truest sense must be recalled: L'art de croire ou préparation philosophique à la foi chrétienne (2 vols., ibid. 1866). In it he demonstrates the need to believe (for unbelievers), the reasons and means for believing (for those who hesitate), and the happiness of believing (for believers).
N.’s apologetics is not profound and therefore does not withstand criticism (especially with regard to the historical data drawn from religions); fundamentally orthodox, it is marked by slight strains of traditionalism and fideism. Yet, written in a captivating style by a gifted mind, it still possesses genuine merits. The work did good and earned broad approval, even from the highest ecclesiastical authorities, because N., a Catholic layman but not a theologian, following the old paths of theology, described its beauties with more human and more vivid nuances, discovering in it something less familiar and less repetitious: ancient doctrine appears there newer and closer to the people of that time and world.