The ‘Great and Good’ Jean Claude

Part 2 in a series on Jean Claude, the great Huguenot Preacher and Theologian

Rev. Jean Claude, 1619 - 1687. French Huguenot theologian

If you missed Part One, click here.

---

The esteemed Huguenot minister, Jean Claude,^[1] was born in Salvetat, a region in the southwest of France equidistant between Toulouse and Montpellier, in 1619.^[2] He was the son of a Protestant minister and fathered a third-generation Protestant minister. Claude studied Philosophy and Divinity at the Academy of Montauban. Upon completing his studies, he was called to a church in La Treine and ordained to the ministry by his father at the age of 26. Jean Claude served the church in La Treine for only one year before accepting a call to serve the church in Saint-Afrique, near Montpellier in the south of France. During his ministry in Saint-Afrique, he “studied hard…though his sermons took up less time than his other studies, he preach[ed] with great facility; he had a wit that easily conceived things, a judgement that did not fail of disposing each piece in its due place.”^[3] In 1648, he married, and in 1653, his wife gave birth to Isaac, his son who would eventually become a protestant minister in the Netherlands. “Monsieur Claude served the church of Saint Afrique for the space of eight years, being belov’d by his flock, known and desir’d by several churches, esteem’d and honour’d in the Synod of upper Languedoc.”^[4]

In 1655, he left Saint-Afrique to pastor in Nimes, where he enjoyed a successful ministry. Some accounts mention that he taught at the theological college in Nimes, but that seems to be unfounded. Instead, he personally discipled many young ministers in their preaching.^[5] Claude’s tenure in Nimes proved to be his most controversial, whereby his Reformed theological convictions came to a head with the Catholics. Claude was appointed the moderator of the 1661 Synod of Upper Languedoc, where a proposal was made to reunite the protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Claude opposed the reunion and was banned from performing his ministerial duties in the entire province of Languedoc. A biographer put it this way, “He was snatched from that church by one of those extraordinary ways which people of his character and singular worth do daily experience; his knowledge; his steadiness, his zeal created a jealousie in a man whose sentiments were not so upright as his."^[6] Jean Claude spent the next six months in Paris attempting to have his ban lifted by the French officials but was unsuccessful. “He forbore preaching, and went to court, being only supported his innocence, he there prosecuted his concern for near six months, but all in vain for the resolution was already taken…to weary out the ministers who were not pleasing to the governors of the provinces.”^[7]

During this six-month season of trial in Paris, he engaged with the Catholics on matters regarding the Eucharist. He published his first public tract, which “made a noise in the world.”^[8] He set out to prove the Calvinist doctrine of real presence, a direct attack against the sacred theology of the Catholic Church.

Being unsuccessful in removing the ministry ban in the province of Languedoc, Jean Claude took a call to minister at the church in Montabaun. He served this church from 1661-1665. During this season, he continued to engage the Catholics in eucharistic matters. He was preparing a tract that was sent to a local bishop, one Claude counted as a friend, yet shortly after sharing his work, he was banished from the city. The reasons remain a mystery, but his work on the Eucharist likely played a part.^[9] Claude returned to Paris to plead his case but was unsuccessful again. During his nine-month stay in Paris, an influential Huguenot church called him as their minister. He accepted the call at the church in Charenton in Paris in 1666.

From 1666 to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Jean Claude ministered to the protestants and engaged the Catholics in Paris. During this season of life, Claude was called to be a professor of theology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, but he refused. Although that would have meant that he could escape from the trials and struggles in Paris between the Huguenots and Catholics, he decided to remain, being convicted to serve the church in Paris. Also, in this season, his son Isaac passed his exams. He was ordained to the ministry by Jean Claude, the third-generation protestant minister in the family and the second to be ordained by his father.

During this final season of ministry in Paris, the plight of the Huguenots worsened. The French crown took more measures to repress the Huguenots, eventually revoking the Edict of Nantes. Protestant leaders were given fifteen days to plan their exile and leave the country; however, Jean Claude was given a mere twenty-four hours.^[10] This rushed, and specific banishment of Jean Claude testifies to his influence in the French Protestant church. The Catholic officials singled him out from among his peers. After leaving France for the Netherlands, Jean Claude published a work summarizing and documenting the evils done to the protestants at the hands of the French Catholics.

Jean Claude’s son Isaac was a minister at a Walloon (French-speaking) congregation in The Hague. Claude went there from France and lived in peace for the rest of his life. He was recognized, supported, and befriended by William of Orange, a long-time champion of the Huguenot cause.^[11] Jean Claude died in January of 1687 after a brief battle with illness. In his final days, he explained that he “had with great application examin’d all religions, but had found none worthy of the wisdom, and capable to lead a man to true happiness, save the Christian religion” and “found that the Reformed religion was the only good religion which was to be followed, that it was entirely found in the word of God.”^[12]

Read Part 3

---

^[1] This title, ‘The Great and Good’ is used to describe Jean Claude in the English edition of his tract on preaching. They are simply two of many wonderful words used to describe this great man. Jean Claude, An Essay on the Composition of a Sermon. Translated from the Original French of the Revd. John Claude, Minister of the French Reformed Church at Charenton. with Notes, by Robert Robinson. The Third Edition. In Two Volumes. ..., vol. 1 (London: printed for T. Scollick, in the City-Road; and T. Wilson and R. Spence, York, 1788), ix.

^[2] There are three main sources for the biographical information of Jean Claude, a biography published in English in 1688, and two secondary sources. Abel-Rodolphe de. Ladevèze, The Life and Death of Monsieur Claude, the Famous Minister of Charenton in France Done out of French by G.P. (London, 1688). J. Wesley White, “JEAN CLAUDE (1619-1687): HUGUENOT PASTOR AND THEOLOGIAN,” Mid-America Journal of Theology, no. 19 (2008). Martin I. Klauber, ed., The Theology of the French Reformed Churches: From Henri IV to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Reformed Historical-Theological Studies (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014).

^[3] Abel-Rodolphe de. Ladevèze, The Life and Death of Monsieur Claude, the Famous Minister of Charenton in France Done out of French by G.P. (London, 1688), 2.

^[4] Ibid, 2.

^[5] Both White and Klauber et al reference this aspect of Claude’s time in Nimes. Claude’s biographer, Ladavéze, mentions that Claude was “born for a chair of Divinity,” but he did not serve. Rather, he privately lectured and taught preaching and doctrine to many students during his time in Nimes. Abel-Rodolphe de. Ladevèze, The Life and Death of Monsieur Claude, the Famous Minister of Charenton in France Done out of French by G.P. (London, 1688), 5.

^[6] Abel-Rodolphe de. Ladevèze, The Life and Death of Monsieur Claude, the Famous Minister of Charenton in France Done out of French by G.P. (London, 1688), 6.

^[7] Ibid, 6.

^[8] Ibid, 7

^[9] J. Wesley White, “JEAN CLAUDE (1619-1687): HUGUENOT PASTOR AND THEOLOGIAN,” Mid-America Journal of Theology, no. 19 (2008), 198.

^[10] The brief account of his life in one of his books puts it this way, “The Roman Catholicks gave him marks of their esteem in a very particular way. Upon the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes October 22, 1685, whereas the other Protestant Ministers had a fortnight allowed them to depart the kingdom, he was ordered to be gone within 24 hours.” Jean Claude, Self-Examination, In Order to a Due Preparation for the Worthy Receiving of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, English (Edinburgh: Gavin Hamilton and Company, 1732), x-xi.

^[11] For more, consider reading chapters 5,6,8, & 9 of Rebecca VanDoodewaard, Reformation Women: Sixteenth-Century Figures Who Shaped Christianity’s Rebirth (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017).

^[12] Abel-Rodolphe de. Ladevèze, The Life and Death of Monsieur Claude, the Famous Minister of Charenton in France Done out of French by G.P. (London, 1688), 49.