wards retired, from France on account of the harshness of the laws against the protestants, and took up his residence at Berlin, where he enjoyed a pension, with the title of councillor, from the elector of Brandenburg. He was also appointed historiographer to the states-general, and died March 17, 1719, in his eightieth year. He wrote a history of Augustus; a history of the twelve sages of Greece; and a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which was much esteemed before the appearance of Rapin's; also a history of the reign of Louis XIV., which was less admired.—G. BL.
LARROQUE, Daniel, son of Matthieu Larroque by his second wife, was born at Vitré about 1660, and was educated for the ministry. He studied under the care of his father, and made a good acquaintance with the learned languages and ancient literature. He had entered the ministry, when the revocation of the edict of Nantes compelled him to leave his country and come to England, where he was appointed pastor of a French church in Castle Street, London. Some months after he left England and went to Copenhagen, where he expected a better position. In this, however, he was disappointed, and went to Holland for a time. He then returned to France, and abandoned protestantism altogether. While in Holland, Bayle intrusted him for a time with the management of the News of the Republic of Letters. No material advantages resulted from his abjuration, and he had to live by his pen. In 1693 he wrote a preface to a satire against the government: the publisher was hanged, and Larroque imprisoned for five years. On his release he obtained several appointments in succession, and a pension afterwards. The rest of his life was given to study, and he died in 1731, having the character of an amiable and accomplished, but somewhat irresolute man. He wrote several original works, some of which are respectable for their talent and criticism; and he also translated Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, and Echard's Roman History.—B. H. C.
LARROQUE, Matthieu de, one of the most accomplished protestant theologians of the seventeenth century, was born of a distinguished family at Layrac, near Agen, in 1619. Having been early left an orphan, his relatives sent him to Montauban, where he studied theology. In 1643 he entered the ministry, and was appointed pastor of Pujols, near Agen; but the syndic of the clergy opposed his entrance. This took him to Paris to lay his case before the government. Though successful in his appeal he did not return to his flock; for the duchess de la Tremoille having heard him preach at Charenton, was so pleased with his talents that she offered him the post of pastor at Vitré, which he accepted and held for almost twenty-seven years. During this period he composed the works which have given him a place among the first French controversialists. He had just published his "Histoire de l'Euchariste," which is properly regarded as his best production, when he received an invitation to Charenton; but the government opposed his appointment, although the deputy-general Ruvigny pleaded his cause. He ultimately accepted a call to Rouen, where he continued till his death in 1684. Larroque's learning and critical powers are apparent in his many works, especially his "History of the Eucharist," his remarks on Pearson's Vindiciæ, and his three books of "Adversaria Sacra."—B. H. C.
* LASAULX, Ernst von, a German philologist, was born at Coblenz, 16th March, 1805; and, after having devoted himself to classical learning at the universities of Bonn and Munich, obtained the chair of philology at Würtzburg, and afterwards at Munich. In 1848 he was a member of the Frankfort national assembly, where he eagerly sided with the Austrian and Roman catholic party. Besides a number of learned essays, he wrote "The Fall of Hellenism," 1854.—K. E.
LASCA, An. F. Grazzini il. See Grazzini.
LASCARIS, Andreas Johannes, a learned Greek refugee, was born in Bithynia, near the river Rhyndacus, whence he is commonly called Rhyndacenus. After the fall of Constantinople he came to Florence, where he obtained the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, who sent him into Greece to collect manuscripts of classical authors, a mission which he executed with much success. When the Medici family were expelled from Florence in 1498 he found a new patron in Charles VIII. of France, who invited him to Paris to teach Greek. Budæus was one of his pupils. In 1503 Louis XII. employed him on a mission to Venice, and in that city he remained for several years as a professor of his native language and literature, till Pope Leo X. placed him at the head of the Greek college at Rome—an institution which he had suggested to Leo for the education of noble Grecian youths. He was at the same time made superintendent of the Greek press, in which capacity he brought out an edition of the Scholia on Homer in 1517, and of the Scholia on Sophocles in 1518. In 1518 he accepted an invitation from Francis I. to return to France; and here he was employed along with his illustrious disciple, Budæus, in forming the royal library of Fontainebleau. Francis also sent him to Venice as his ambassador. He died at a very advanced age in Rome in 1535, having yielded, in repairing thither a second time, to the urgent solicitations of Pope Paul III. He edited splendid editions of the Greek Anthologia and of Callimachus, Florence, 1494. He was also the reputed author of a volume of Greek and Latin Epigrams, published in Paris in 1527.—P. L.
LASCARIS, Constantine, of the same family as the preceding, was another of the learned refugees to whom Western and Central Europe was indebted for the revival of Greek learning in the fifteenth century. When Constantinople was sacked by the Turks in 1454 he fled into Italy and found an honourable aslyum in Milan, where, among others, he taught Greek to Hippolyta, daughter of Duke Francis Sforza, who afterwards became the wife of Alfonso, duke of Calabria, son of Ferdinand, king of Naples. He subsequently taught Greek and rhetoric in Rome and Naples, and finally settled at Messina, where he was treated with great distinction, and where he drew numerous disciples around him, among the rest the celebrated Cardinal Bembo. He died in 1493 at an advanced age, bequeathing his valuable library of MSS. to the senate of Messina, from whose possession they were afterwards transferred by the Spaniards to the Escurial. His Greek Grammar, published at Milan in 1476, was the first printed Greek book. It was afterwards translated into Latin, and several editions of it in this form issued from the Aldine press at Venice.—P. L.
LASCARIS, Theodore, Greek emperor of Nice, was born about 1175. He was descended from an old Byzantine family, and married in 1198 Anna, widow of Isaac Comnenus, and second daughter of the Emperor Alexis III. He distinguished himself by his bravery and ability during the two sieges of Constantinople by the Latins; and when the enemy were already in the city he was elected emperor by the soldiers and the citizens in 1204. But it was too late to repel the besiegers, and Lascaris and his wife made their escape during the massacre and pillage of the city, and took possession of Nice in Bithynia. Here he rallied round him a small body of resolute soldiers, and replanted and upheld the imperial standard. He had numerous enemies, domestic and foreign, to contend with, and was sometimes victorious, sometimes unsuccessful; but he ultimately triumphed over all opposition, and preserved a fragment of the empire, from the banks of the Mæander to the suburbs of Nicomedia, and at length of Constantinople. He died in 1222, after a reign of eighteen years, and was succeeded by his son-in-law, John Ducas Vataces.—J. T.
LAS CASAS, Bartolommeo de, renowned as the friend of the oppressed American Indians at the period of the Spanish conquests, was born in Seville in 1474. His father, Antonio, was of noble rank, and was one of the companions of Columbus in the discovery of the New World. He was educated for the priesthood at the university of Salamanca, where he had for his attendant a young American Indian whom his father had brought with him from the West Indies; and he gave the earliest sign of his sympathy and compassion for the poor aborigines of the West—whom his countrymen had already begun to oppress with the greatest cruelty—by restoring his young servant to liberty and sending him home to his native island with rich presents. Soon after this, which occurred in 1498, he wrote his first work in defence of the rights of the Indians, "Principia quædam ex quibus procedendum est in disputatione ad manifestandam et defendendam justitiam Indorum." Justice to the Indians had already become the master thought of his soul, and to that single aim he had resolved to devote the whole energies of his life. His life proved a long one; he was ninety-two years of age when he died; and during the whole of that time he lived and laboured for no other object than to do good to the Indians, by converting them to Christianity, by protecting them from cruelty and oppression, and by pleading for them indefatigably, with tongue and pen, before the sovereigns and councillors and grandees of the Spanish nation. His first visit to America was
