Lamiletiere, Theophile Brachet De

Lamiletiere, Theophile Brachet De, a noted French theologian, was born about the year 1596. He studied at the University of Heidelberg, and afterwards practiced law at Paris. He soon, however, tired of the bar, and devoted himself to theology. Having become elder of the Protestant Church at Charenton, he took an active part in all the religious controversies of the times, and was one of the most prominent members of the political assembly of La Rochelle in 1690, whither he had been sent by the Consistory of Paris. He subsequently went with La Chapelliere to Holland, to ask aid of the states-general for the Protestants of France. We next find him at the Assembly of Milhau in 1625, and in 1627 at Paris, where he was arrested as an agent of the duke of Rohan. He was condemned to death, but his life was spared on account of the threatening attitude which the inhabitants of La Rochelle assumed, in retaliative, towards the person of one of their prisoners, a relation of P. Joseph (the confessor and secret agent of Richelieu). He was finally released, and even received a pension from Richelieu on the condition of using every exertion to reunite the different Protestant churches. He now became the pliant tool of Richelieu, and was excommunicated by the Church of Charenton in 1644 for not having partaken of the Lord's Supper in twelve years. He finally joined the Roman Catholic Church, April 2, 1645. The remainder of his life was employed in writing against Protestantism. He died in 1665, despised alike by Protestants and Romanists. His principal works are. Discours des vrayes raisons pour lesquelles ceux de la religion en France peuvent et doivent resister par armes a la persecution ouverte (1622, 8vo); very scarce, as it was condemned to be burned by the public executioner: —Lettre a M. Rambours pour la reunion des evangeliques aux catholiques (Paris, 1628, 12mo): — De universi orbis Christiani pace et concordia per cardinalem ducem Richelium constituenda (Par. 1634, 8vo; transl. into French, 1635, 4to): — Le Moyen de la paix Chretienne (Par. 1637, 8vo): — La Necessite de la Puissance du Pape en l'Eglise (Paris, 1640, 8vo): — Le Catholique reform (Paris, 1642, 8vo): — Le Pacifique veritable (Paris, 1644, 8vo) — condemned by the Sorbonne; etc. See Benoit, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, 2; De Marolles, Memoires; Grotius, Epistolae; Bayle, Dictionnaire Historique; Tallemant, Historiettes; Haag, La France Protestante; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, 29:222. (J.N.P.)