The place of Mersenne as his Parisian representative was in the main taken by Claude Clerselier (the Frenchtranslator of the Objections and Responses), whom he had become acquainted with in Paris.
He was educated at Zurich and at Saumur (where he graduated), studied theology at Orleans under Claude Pajon, at Paris under Jean Claude and at Geneva under Louis Tronchin, and was ordained to the ministry in his native place in 1683.
Claude Antoine de Besiade, marquis d'Avaray, was deputy for the bailliage of Orleans in the states-general of 1789, and proposed a Declaration of the Duties of Man as a pendant to the Declaration of the Rights of Man; he subsequently became a lieutenant-general in 1814, a peer of France in 1815, and duc d'Avaray in 1818.
After a year of zealous work as preacher and director he was sent by the bishop, Claude de Granier, to try and win back the province of Chablais, which had embraced Calvinism when usurped by Bern in 1535, and had retained it even after its restitution to Savoy in 1564.
Etymologically the word implies that the messages are written, but its earliest use was of appliances that depended on visual signals, such as the semaphore or optical telegraph of Claude Chappe.
