NICOLAS, JEAN-JACQUES-AUGUSTE. - Apologist, b. at Bordeaux on 16 Jan. 1807, d. at Versailles on 17 Jan. 1888. After a listless youth, he devoted himself passionately to the study of law at Toulouse (1828). In 1849 he was engaged by Falloux as head of division in the ministry of worship; in 1854 he was appointed inspector of libraries; from 1850 to 1877 he passed through various grades of the magistracy.
He became an apologist, among the best known of the 19th century, through a chance circumstance: his brother-in-law having lost a son, N. was asked to console him with a piece of writing that would explain the intimate reasons for Christian hopes: thus were born the Etudes philosophiques sur le christianisme (Bordeaux, in fascicles, 1842, then in 4 vols., 1842-45), which enjoyed an extraordinary success (various translations and 26 French editions during the author's lifetime).
After the unexpected outcome of his first work, N. devoted himself entirely to the defense of the Catholic faith, writing numerous other works, which were suggested to him by the various currents of thought that swept through France in the 19th 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 sponsored 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 was to be combated. In subsequent editions he enriched the volume with important chapters on the individualistic tendency of Protestantism. From 1855 to 1860 the Nouvelles études philosophiques sur le christianisme appeared, which N. composed in fulfillment of a vow to the Madonna; the result was a mariology of great scope, destined to exercise 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, which he composed with growing zeal into his late old age, mention must be made of a jewel of apologetics in the truest sense: 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 the means of believing (for the wavering), the happiness of believing (for believers).
N.'s apologetics is not profound and therefore does not withstand criticism (especially as regards the historical data taken from religions); fundamentally orthodox, it is marked by light tinges of traditionalism and fideism; written, however, in a fascinating style by a brilliant spirit, it still presents real good qualities. The work did good and deserved wide approval, even from the highest hierarchies, because the Catholic layman, but not theologian, that N. was, traveling the old paths of theology, described its beauties with more human and more vivid nuances, discovering in it something less hackneyed and less repeated: the ancient doctrine appears there newer and closer to the men of that time and of that world.
Bibliography5 works
Antonio Piolanti