BASNAGE, JACQUES (1653-1723), French Protestant divine, was the eldest son of the eminent lawyer Henri Basnage, sieur de Franquenay (1615-95), and was born at Rouen in Nor mandy on Aug. 8 1653, and died at The Hague on Dec. 22 1723. He studied classical languages at Saumur and afterwards the ology at Geneva. He was pastor at Rouen (his native place) from 1676 till 1685, when, on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, he obtained leave of the king to retire to Holland. He settled at Rotterdam as a minister pensionary till 1691, when he was chosen pastor of the Walloon church. In 1709 the grand pensionary A. Heinsius (1641-1720) secured his election as one of the pastors of the Walloon church at The Hague, intending to employ him mainly in civil affairs. He was engaged in a secret negotiation with Marshal d'Uxelles, plenipotentiary of France at the Congress of Utrecht. In 1716 Dubois, who was at The Hague at the instance of the regent Orleans, for the purpose of negotiating the Triple Alliance between France, Great Britain and Holland, sought the advice of Basnage, and the French govern ment also turned to him for help in view of the threatened rising in the Cevennes. True to the principles of Calvin, he denounced the rebellion of the Camisards (q.v.) in his Instructions pas torales aux Re f ormes de France sur l'obeissance due aux soverains (Paris 1'720), which was printed by order of the court, and scat tered broadcast in the south of France. Basnage died on Sept.
22 1723.
His works include: Histoire de la religion des eglises ref ormeesT (Rotterdam, 169o), the Histoire de l'eglise depuis Jesus-Christ jusqu'a present (ib. 1699)—both of them written from the point of view of Protestant polemics—and, of greater scientific value, the Histoire des Juifs (Rotterdam, 1706, Eng. trans. 1708) and the Antiquites judaiques ou remarques critiques sur la republique des Hebreux (1713).