André Rivet

A 1647 engraving of André Rivet by Wenceslas Hollar

André Rivet (Andreas Rivetus) (August 1572 – January 7, 1651) was a French Huguenot theologian.

Life

He was born at Saint-Maixent, 43 km (27 mi) southwest of Poitiers, France. After completing his education at Berne, he studied theology privately at Berne and La Rochelle, and from 1595 to 1620 was at Thouars, first as chaplain of the duke of La Trémouille and later as pastor. In 1617 he was elected president of the Synod at Vitré; and in 1620 he was called to Leiden as professor of theology.

In 1632 Stadholder Frederick Henry appointed Rivet tutor of his son, later William II, while the university made him honorary professor. In 1641 he attended the prince on his visit to England, and in 1646 was appointed curator of the educational institution in Breda, where he passed the remainder of his life and died. Archibald Alexander devotes a chapter of his Thoughts on Religious Experience to Rivet's "death-bed exercises".

Works

A rigid Calvinist and an uncompromising enemy of the Roman Catholic Church, Rivet was in his day the most influential member of the theological faculty of Leyden; and together with his colleagues he drew up, in 1625, the Synopsis purioris theologiae, which discussed the entire field of Reformed dogmatics in fifty-two disputations. At Leyden Rivet also worked on Old Testament exegesis.

His numerous writings are divided among the provinces of polemics, exegesis, dogmatics, and edification. They were collected in three volumes (Rotterdam, 1651–53), the most important being the Isagoge ad scripturam sacram Veteris et Novi Testamenti (Dort, 1616).

Other works:

References

External links

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jackson, Samuel Macauley, ed. (1914). "article name needed". New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (third ed.). London and New York: Funk and Wagnalls.