Nicolas des Gallars

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nicolas des Gallars [in Lat. Gallasius] (c. 1520 - c. 1580), was a Calvinistic divine.

He first appears as author of a Defensio of William Farel, published at Geneva in 1545, followed (1545-1549) by translations into French of three tracts by Calvin. In 1551 he was admitted burgess of Geneva, and in 1553 made pastor of a country church in the neighbourhood. In 1557 he was sent to minister to the Protestants at Paris; his conductor, Nicolas du Rousseau, having prohibited books in his possession, was executed at Dijon; des Gallars, having nothing suspicious about him, continued his journey.

On the revival of the Strangers' church in London (1560), he, being then minister at Geneva, came to London to organize the French branch; and in 1561 he published La Forme de police ecclesiastique instituée a Londres en l'Eglise des Français. In the same year he assisted Theodore Beza at the colloquy of Poissy. He became minister to the Protestants at Orléans in 1564; presided at the synod of Paris in 1565; was driven out of Orléans with other Protestants in 1568; and in 1571 was chaplain to Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre.

Calvin held him in high esteem, employing him as amanuensis, and as editor as well as translator of several of his exegetical and polemical works. He himself wrote a commentary on Exodus (1560); edited an annotated French Bible (1562) and New Testament (1562); and published tracts against Arians (1565-1566).

His main work was his edition of Irenaeus (1570) with prefatory letter to Grindal, then bishop of London, and giving, for the first time, some fragments of the Greek text.

His collaboration with Beza in the Histoire des Eglises Reformees du royaume de France (1580) is doubted by Bayle. See Bayle, Dictionnaire Hist. et crit.; Jean Senebier, Hist. littéraire de Genève (1786); Nouvelle Biog. gen. (1857).