Goulu, John

, a French writer of some note, was the son of Nicholas Goulu, royal professor of Greek in the university of Paris, in 1567, and author of a translation from Greek into Latin of Gregentius’s dispute with the Jew Herbanus, which De Noailles, the French ambassador, had brought from Constantinople, and of other works, a collection of which was printed at Paris in 1580. His son was born at Paris Aug. 25, 1576, and educated for the bar; |

but, having failed in the first cause he pleaded, he felt the disappointment so acutely as to relinquish the profession, and retire into a convent. He chose the order of the Feuillans, and entered amongst them in 1604. He was so much esteemed in his order that he always enjoyed some office in it, and was at last made general. The name he took when he became a monk, was Dom John of St. Francis. As he understood the Greek tongue, he translated into French Epictetus’s Manual, Arrian’s Dissertations, some of St. Basil’s treatises, and the works of Dionysius Areopagita; to which he added a vindication of this St. Dionysius’s works. He also revised his father’s Latin translation of St. Gregory Nyssen against Eunomius, and published it. He also wrote a book against Du Moulin’s treatise of the calling of pastors, “De la Vocation des Pasteurs” the Life of Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva; and a Funeral Oration on Nicholas le Fevre, preceptor to Lewis XIII.; but it is said that he never delivered it. He did not, however, gain so great reputation by all those writings as by his angry controversy with Balzac, already noticed in our account of that writer. Goulu died Jan. 5, 1629. ¹