NICOLE, PIERRE (1625-1695), one of the most distin guished of the French Jansenists, was the son of a provincial barrister, and was born at Chartres. Sent to Paris in 1642 to study theology, he soon entered into relations with the Jansenist community at Port Royal (q.v.) through his aunt, Marie des Anges Suireau, who was for a short time abbess of the convent. For some years he was a master in the "little school" for boys established at Port Royal, and taught Greek to young Jean Racine, the future poet. With Antoine Arnauld, he acted as general editor of the controversial literature put forth by the Jansenists. He had a large share in collecting the materials for Pascal's Provincial Letters (1656) ; in 1658 he translated the Letters into Latin, under the pseudonym of Nicholas Wendrock. In 1664 he himself began a series of letters, Les Imaginaires, in tended to show that the heretical opinions commonly ascribed to the Jansenists really existed only in the imagination of the Jesuits. His letters being violently attacked by Desmaretz de Saint-Sorlin, an erratic minor poet who professed great devotion to the Jesuits, Nicole replied to him in another series of letters, Les Visionnaires (1666). In the course of these he observed that poets and dramatists were no better than "public poisoners."
About the same time Nicole became involved in a controversy about transubstantiation with the Huguenot Claude; out of this grew a massive work La Perpetuite de la foi de l'eglise catholique touchant l'euchariste (1669), the joint effort of Nicole and An toine Arnauld. But Nicole's most popular production was his Essais de morale (14 vols., 1671 seq.), a series of short discussions on practical Christianity. In 1679, on the renewal of the perse cution of the Jansenists, Nicole was forced to fly to Belgium in company with 'Arnauld. But the two soon parted. Nicole was elderly and in poor health ; the life of a fugitive was not to his taste, and he complained that he wanted rest. "Rest," answered Arnauld, "when you have eternity to rest in !" In 1683 Nicole made a rather ambiguous peace with the authorities. and was allowed to come back to Paris. There he continued his literary labours ; he was writing a refutation of the new heresy of the Quietists when death overtook him on Nov. 16, 1695. (See PORT ROYAL.) Several abridgments of the Essais exist, notably a Choix des essais de morale de Nicole, ed. Silvestre de Saci (1857).
Nicole's life is told at length in the 4th volume of Sainte Beuve's Port-Royal.