David Ancillon
French Huguenot theologian

David Ancillon (17 March 1617 in Metz – 3 September 1692) was a French Huguenot pastor and author.
At sixteen, he went to Geneva to study theology and, in 1641, was appointed minister of Meaux. In 1653, he accepted a post in his native Metz. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 compelled him to move to Frankfort. He then moved to Hanau and then Berlin, where he died on 3 September 1692. He was the father of Charles Ancillon.
Biography
Son of a lawyer, David Ancillon was born in Metz. This French city was under the protection of the King of France Louis XIII. He came from a line of notable Protestants, who were established in the Lorraine region.
When he was only 9 years old, young David was sent to Jesuits's college. The Jesuits quickly noticed the oratorical and erudite qualities of the boy and tried several times, though without success, to convert him to Catholicism.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3017374. VIAF identifies the subject as 73897172. The Library of Congress control number is no2006129163. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1617, 1692, 1641 and 1653.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Ancillon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.