Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 12 - Section I
Chapter XII.
REFUGEE LITERATI.
Bouhéreau.
Elie Bouhéreau was born at La Rochelle, where his father, Elie Bouhéreau, was pasteur in 1642. He was M.D. of the University of Orange, 29th August 1667, and after taking his degree, he travelled in Italy with his cousin, Elie Richard Bouhéreau. He settled in La Rochelle, and practised medicine, at the same time acting as an elder in his church, and studying various departments of literature. As persecution thickened, he was banished by Lettre de Cachet to Poitiers. Continuing steadfast in the faith, he was debarred from the practice of medicine, but was permitted to reside in Paris, Not many months had elapsed, when an order was served upon him to remove to the extreme confines of Languedoc. He, however, betook himself secretly to La Rochelle, where his wife and children were, and from that famous port they all set sail and arrived safely in England. His father, it is said, came over with him. In the Naturalizations, dated 15th April 1687 (see List xiii.), we find the family, Elias Bouhéreau, Margaret, wife, Elias, Richard, Amator, John, Margaret, Claude, and Magdalen, children.[1]
Elie Bouhéreau was a scholar of no mean reputation. He was an intimate friend of the scholarly secretary of the French Academy, Valentine Conrart (born 1603, died 1675), who may be said to have been the most accomplished and the most universally popular Huguenot of his own or any generation. When the erudite Monsieur Rou sent presentation copies of his Chronological Tables to the marked men of his time, Bouhéreau was on the list of recipients; this was in 1672. In acknowledgment of the gift Rou received the following letter:—
“Sir — After the approbation which the king, the dauphin, the Duc de Montausieur, Mr. Conrart, and the great and illustrious in Paris have given to your Tables Chronologiques, thanks from a mere provincial may seem of mighty little consequence. Possibly they may be indifferent to you; still, Sir, they must dutifully be rendered. It is not for me to speculate regarding your sentiments, but I must have respect to gratitude which inspires my own. That I cannot imprison within my breast, and if its testimony impresses you as being beneath you, you must take the blame of having dispensed your benefits to too low a level. When I hardly believed I had the honour of being yet in your memory, you made me see that there I am in almost the same rank as the crowned heads and sovereign arbiters in polite literature, by regaling me with the same present which you offered to them, and which they have received so well. As yet I have been able only to run over your beautiful tables; but I have already been so much charmed with the distinctness both of the printing and of the matter, that when the binder has put them into shape, they will prove a most agreeable and constant recreation for my eyes and my mind. I shall often employ them in my most serious study, learning more by a glance of the eye than I could by turning over the leaves of many ponderous volumes. And what, when you have retouched your work, as they assure me you intend to do? After that, it will be easy to take a course of study from all the ancient historians, and then from all the modern, when you are pleased further to favour us. I would wish that Monsieur Tess.reau, who is greatly interested in your work, and who would be best possible co adjutor if such were needed, could persuade you to continue it down to our own time. Meanwhile, I am under particular obligations to him for having revived in your heart those favourable sentiments towards myself which I might have feared that the lapse of time had effaced.”
Dated at La Rochelle, 7th April 1672.
Rou was highly gratified by this letter, and in his answer to it he assured Bouhéreau that the offer of his friendship was to him more precious and substantial than the best reception at court, and the most potent incense of the Academy, that he is honoured by his eulogium, though he cannot feel worthy of it, as coming from one who is confessedly a sovereign arbiter as well as a labourer in the belles lettres, and has been authoritatively selected as an organ for diffusing the eloquence of the first Fathers of the Church.
Rou’s allusion is to Conrart’s appreciation of Bouhéreau’s powers. This leading member of the Academy took delight in committing important literary tasks to his many friends, selecting for each what he was likely to perform best. The task which he assigned to Bouhéreau was the translation of Origen’s Treatise in reply to Celsus, and the task was accepted. The work would have been done with great expedition, but Conrart’s death removed the motive to complete it. However, during leisure moments it was completed, and it was among the author’s manuscripts when himself, his family, and his baggage were landed in England.
The first notice of him by Englishmen is in the Latin language, Bouhéreau being Latinised into Boherellus. Anthony Wood was thus led into the mistake, when translating the Oxford University Fasti, of naming him Boherel.
“1687. In a Convocation held 15th December letters were read from the Chancellor of the University in favour of one Elias Boherel (born at Rochelle, partly bred under his father, an eminent physician, and two years or more in the University of Saumur), to be created Bachelor of the Civil Law; but whether he was created or admitted, it appears not. He and his father were French Protestants, and were lately come into England, to enjoy the liberty of their religion, which they could not do in France, because of their expulsion thence by the king of that country.” [Wood, I believe, was mistaken in saying that the father was a physician.]
With regard to Bouhéreau’s refugee life few particulars are known. His abilities found a discerning patron in the Earl of Galway, who during his government of Ireland employed him as his secretary, i.e., from 1697 to 1701. In the Portarlington register he is entered as a godfather (by proxy), nth July 1700, and is styled, “Monsieur Bouhéreau, Secretaire de Son Excellence Mylord Comte de Gallway, l’un des Lords Justice d’Irlande.” During this time he received information that a French translation of Origen against Celsus was announced for publication. This reminded him of his manuscript, and he forthwith gave it to the public in the shape of a handsome quarto volume, “Traité d’ Origéne contre Celse, ou Défence de la Religion Chrétienne contre les accusations des Païens. Traduit du Grec par Elie Bouhéreau. Amsterdam, 1700.” Its dedicatory epistle to Lord Galway has already been given to my readers. In the Preface he ascribes his undertaking to the order laid upon him by Conrart, “the arbiter of the Belles lettres, and the father of all lovers of literature in France;” he alludes to his deceased friend Claude’s fear, that the publication of Origen’s work in the vulgar tongue might infect some readers with the errors which that father mingled with Bible truth; but refers to Baron Spanheim and Professor Fabricius as having assured him that Origen’s heresies had been so well discussed, that they bore within the very statement of them their own refutation.
Mr. Bouhéreau remained in Dublin after the departure of his patron. He became pasteur of one of the French congregations in Dublin, was episcopally ordained, was Chantor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral from 1708 to 1719, and Doctor of Divinity. He was keeper of the library of that cathedral (known as Archbishop Marsh’s Library), and custodier of a large collection of Huguenot documents in print and in manuscript, partly amassed by himself, and which are now the property of the Consistory of La Rochelle. He had a son, John Bouhéreau, who obtained a scholarship in Trinity College, and was a beneficed clergyman of the Irish Church. The family became an Irish family of high rank, and the surname Bouhéreau became Borough.
- ↑ The French Register of Thorney, under date 25th August 1689, mentions Pierre Bouchereau, surgeon and apothecary at Eye, and the baptism of his daughter. (See my Historical Introduction.)