Bouquin, Pierre (Petrus Boquinus)

BOUQUIN, bū´´kaå´, PIERRE (PETRUS BOQUINUS): French Calvinist; b. either in the province of Saintonge or in that of Guienne; d. at Lausanne 1582. The first certain date in his life is his taking the degree of doctor of theology at the university of Bourges Apr. 23, 1539. He was a Carmelite monk at Bourges and rose to be prior; but, embracing the Reformation, he left his monastery in 1541 and went first to Basel, then to Leipsic and Wittenberg, where he had letters to Luther and Melanchthon. The latter recommended him to Butzer when a theologian was required to continue the lectures which Calvin had delivered in Strasburg. Here he began to lecture on Galatians in September, 1542. Later he returned to Bourges, where he lectured on Hebrew and the Scriptures, gaining protection and a pension from Margaret of Navarre, and being allowed by the archbishop to preach in the cathedral. The Protestant leaders, Calvin, Farel, and Beza, seem to have suspected him of intending to desert the Reformation; but his teaching brought him again into conflict with the Roman authorities, and he left Bourges once more for Strasburg in 1555. Here he remained until the elector Otto Henry appointed him in 1557 to a provisional professorship in the University of Heidelberg, which was made permanent the next year. In the internal dissensions of Protestantism he took an increasingly decided Calvinistic stand, and in the reign of Frederick III was thus the only Heidelberg theologian to retain his position, and was made head of the faculty and a member of the new Reformed church council (1560). This period of prosperity ended, however, with the death of Frederick III, after which he was deprived of his position (1577), and became, a year later, professor and preacher at Lausanne. His numerous works are mainly polemical treatises against the Lutherans and Roman Catholics.

(E. F. Karl Müller.)

Bibliography: Biographical materiel is found in his Brevis notatio . . . de cœna domini, pp. 140–179, Heidelberg, 1582. Consult further: M. Adam, Vitæ eruditorum, ii, 72 sqq., Heidelberg, 1706; E. and É. Haag, La France protestante, ed. H. L. Bordier, ii, 875 sqq., Paris, 1879.