Daniel de Superville (1657-1728)

Daniel de Superville (August 1657 in Saumur – 9 June 1728 in Rotterdam), also known as Daniel de Superville père (as his son was also called Daniel), was a Huguenot pastor and theologian who fled France for the Dutch Republic in 1685 and became the minister of the Walloon church in Rotterdam. He is known particularly for his published Sermons.

Daniel de Superville is best known for his Sermons sur divers textes de l'Écriture sainte. This collection of sermons was published in three volumes, the first of which was published in 1700. It was reprinted a number of times. In 1743 a fourth volume was published, containing 12 sermons. An English translation of the Sermons was published in 1816 by John Allen.

His first publication was a series of 12 letters, Lettres sur les devoirs de l'église affligée ("On the Duties of the Afflicted Church"), in November 1691. In 1706 he also published a catechism entitled Les vérites et les devoirs de la religion chrétienne ("The Truths and Duties of Religion"), and in 1718 he published the treaty Le vrai communiant, ou Traité de la sainte cène et des moiens d'y bien participer ("The True Communicant"), translated into Dutch as De ware dischgenoot (1737).

Daniel de Superville's family originated in Osse-en-Aspe in Béarn, in the French Pyrenees. His great-grandfather Jean de Superville served as personal physician to King Henry IV of France. His grandfather and father, both called Jacques de Superville, were also physicians, the former in Niort, the latter in Saumur.

De Superville was born in Saumur and studied theology there. From 1677 to 1679 he also followed studies in theology in Geneva. In 1683 he became a pastor of the Protestant church in Loudun. As part of King Louis XIV of France's persecution of Huguenots, the dragonnades instituted in 1681, he was charged in mid-1685 with preaching a serditious sermon, and was detained in Paris for three months to await trial. Following Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau in October 1685, revoking the Edict of Nantes, Daniel de Superville and 600 of his followers fled France to seek asylum in the Dutch Republic. There, he and his first wife Elisabeth de Monnery settled in Maastricht.

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