author
Charles Ancillon
1659–1715
A French jurist, diplomat, and historian, he became one of the notable Huguenot voices in exile after the upheavals of late 17th-century France. His writing is especially remembered for documenting the lives and settlement of French Protestant refugees in Brandenburg.
1 Audiobook
Traité des eunuques
by Charles Ancillon
About the author
Born in Metz in 1659, he came from a prominent French Protestant family and studied law at Marburg, Geneva, and Paris. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes forced many Huguenots into exile, he followed the refugee community to Berlin, where his father, David Ancillon, served the French Protestant church.
In Brandenburg-Prussia, he built a career as a jurist and diplomat and became an important representative of the French refugee community. Sources also credit him with helping shape education for French Protestants in Berlin and with taking part, alongside Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, in the founding of the Berlin Academy.
He also wrote historical and legal works, including accounts of the establishment of French refugees in Brandenburg, which helped preserve the story of Huguenot displacement and resettlement. He died in Berlin in 1715.