DAILLÉ, JEAN

French Protestant preacher and scholar; b. Châtelleraut, France, Jan. 6, 1594; d. Charenton, France, April 15, 1670. Daillé was born of a devotedly Protestant family; he studied philosophy and theology at Saumur, and became a protégé of Philippe duplessis-mornay, then the most prominent lay leader of French Protestantism. As tutor to Mornay's grandchildren, Daillé toured Italy and other countries (1619–21). When a newly ordained Protestant minister, he became Mornay's castle preacher (1623). Soon thereafter Mornay died, however, and Daillé was named minister first in Saumur (1625), then in the important Paris suburb of Charenton (1626–70). He gradually rose to national prominence as a spokesman for Protestantism, and in 1659 presided over the Loudun national synod of the French Reformed Church, the last permitted by the government of louis xiv. Daillé published many volumes of sermons, most of them exegetical, and he was widely praised as a master of French style. He was also widely respected as a student of patristics, but he argued against placing great reliance on the authority of the Church Fathers, a position that provoked attacks by both Catholic and Anglican scholars. Within his own Calvinist theological camp, Daillé tended to side with Moïse amyraut and others who softened the rigors of extreme predestinarianism by introducing a doctrine of conditional universal grace.

Bibliography: e. and e. haag, La France protestante, ed. h. bordier (2d ed. Paris 1877–88) 5:23–36. a. rÉbelliau, Bossuet: Historien du protestantisme (3d ed. Paris 1909). h. r. guggisberg, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (3d ed. Tübingen 1957–65), 2:20. f. stegmÜller, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 3:124.

[r. m. kingdon]