Allix, Pierre

ALLIX, ɑ̄´´lîx´, PIERRE: Controversialist of the French Reformed Church; b. at Alençon (118 m. w.s.w. of Paris), Orne dept., 1641; d. in London Mar. 3, 1717. He was educated in the theological seminary at Sedan, and held pastoral charges at Saint-Agobile in Champagne and at Charenton. On the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) he went to England, and James II. allowed him to establish a church in London for the numerous French exiles using the liturgy of the Church of England. In 1690 he was appointed canon of Salisbury. The fame of his learning was so great that both Oxford and Cambrige conferred the degree of doctor upon him, and the English clergy requested him to write a complete history of the councils. This great work was to embrace seven folio volumes, but it never appeared. His published writings, in French, English, and Latin, are mostly of a polemical or apologetic nature, and display a thorough knowledge of Christian antiquity and of the primitive and medieval ecclesiastical writers. In his two books, Some Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont (London, 1690), and Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of the Albigenses (1692), he upheld against Bossuet the view that the Albigenses were not dualists, but identical with the Waldenses, and he contributed much to the upholding of this erroneous view.

(A. Hauck).

Bibliography: E. and É. Haag, La France protestante, 61-68, Paris, 1879; DNB, i. 334-335; D. C. A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France, ii. 328-334, Edinburgh, 1886.