Jean Rou, savant huguenot

Michaël Green, docteur en histoire de l’Université de Groningue, vient de publier sa thèse :

Michaël Green, The Huguenot Jean Rou (1638-1711): Scholar, educator, civil servant, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2015, 480 p.

Présentation :

Jean Rou (1638-1711), was a Huguenot scholar, educator and civil servant. Despite having an established career as a lawyer at the Parlement de Paris, he chose instead to dedicate himself to scholarly publications. After being accused of offending the Catholic Church in his Tables de l’histoire universelle moderne (1675) and consequently imprisoned in the Bastille, Rou had to leave France. Initially, he went to England, where he was employed as a tutor. After a short return to his motherland, where he taught local nobles, he was invited to The Hague, in the United Provinces, to teach the sons of Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijk, the future governor of Suriname. Finally, in 1689, Jean Rou was appointed as translator of the States-General of the United Provinces.

Based on his memoirs and extensive archival sources, this book offers a biographical study on Jean Rou. It focuses on the means by which he established and managed his career in France and abroad. It also presents a comparative examination of the educational ideas and practices of Jean Rou and his position as a man of letters. Although Jean Rou is in the centre of this book, it offers a fascinating insight into intellectual and social practices of Huguenots at his time from two angles that have been rarely discussed before.

La table des matière de l’ouvrage peut être téléchargée ici.