Note 277 — CCLXI.—To Nicolas Colladon.[277]

"To Nicolas Colladon, a man distinguished for piety and learning."

Among the numerous French refugees whom persecution led yearly to Geneva, there were none more distinguished than the members of the Colladon family, originally from Berry, where they occupied an eminent position, and are reckoned, even in our own day, among the number of the Genevese aristocracy. Nicolas Colladon, to whom the letter of the Reformer is addressed, was the son of Leon Colladon, the celebrated parliamentary advocate of Bourges, who, with his brother Germain, retired to Geneva in the early part of the year 1551. Long initiated in evangelical doctrine, Nicolas Colladon continued to exercise those pastoral functions in his adopted country, which he had previously performed in Berry. In 1564 he was made Principal of the College of Geneva, and in 1566 succeeded Calvin himself in the chair of theology, without ceasing to discharge his pastoral duties with a zeal which, during the plague of 1570, found a perilous opportunity of signalizing itself. He spent the last years of his life in the Canton de Vaud. The precise date of his death is not known.—Senebier, Hist. Litt., tom. i. p. 398. Galiffe, Notices Généalogiques, tom. ii. p. 566; and Haag, France Protestante, Art Colladon.