Thomas Gautier

Thomas Gautier (born March 2, 1638 in Piedmont ; † May 27, 1709 in Marburg ) was a French Protestant theologian who later worked in Hesse . He was a preacher in the Waldensian community in Marburg and a professor at the university there.

Born in the Waldensian Val Cluson or Pragelas as the son of a royal notary, he studied rhetoric , philosophy and, from 1661, theology in Geneva . He then worked as a Reformed preacher in Fenestrelle , was charged with heresy in 1674 and inviting foreign preachers without permission, and was imprisoned for a few months. When the persecution of his communities continued, he traveled to Paris to defend them . However, he was unsuccessful with the ministers, who interpreted the Edict of Nantes rather restrictively.

In 1678 he became a professor at the Reformed Academy of Die in the Dauphiné , which was closed in 1684. Gautier was called to a religious talk by the Bishop of Grenoble , who later became Cardinal la Camus . As he remained true to his profession , he was banished from France . He now migrated (probably with a train from Waldensians) to Zurich, where he stayed for 14 months, and in 1687 accepted a call to the Hessian University of Marburg as a theology professor. He arranged for more refugees to follow suit and took on the obligation to hold church services every Sunday as a preacher for the French Huguenots who immigrated to Marburg . He had a conflict with the physicist Denis Papin, who also worked at the university, about the manners in this community . In the background there were also differences of opinion on the teaching of René Descartes .

Johann Georg Brand and Philipp Johann Tilemann were among Gautier's Marburg professor colleagues in theology, and among the better-known of his students were Johann Christian Kirchmayer and Johann Joachim Schröder . The writings left by Gautier are predominantly disputations on dogmatics .

As a pastor of the Waldensian community, he made a decisive contribution to the orderly settlement of the refugees from the Val Cluson , who received the dilapidated farm Hof ​​Frauenberg as a fief south of Marburg . The Hessian Landgrave Karl encouraged immigration from Piedmont, which - like Prussia with the Edict of Potsdam - should lead to the establishment of agricultural and commercial businesses after the destruction of the war. Through Gautier's efforts, the immigrants received various privileges and tax rebates for 10 years.

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• Heinrich Heppe:  Gautier, Thomas . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1878, p. 445 f.

1. ↑ W.Bach: history of the Hessian church constitution .. , Marburg 1832
2. ↑ U.Niggemann: integration policy between conflict and consensus: the Huguenot settlement in Germany and England , Cologne-Vienna 2008, p.475 / 76
3. ↑ Th. Kiefner The Waldensians on their way out of the Val Cluson ... Temporarily to Germany , Göttingen 1985