Raise in Montpellier, Barbeyrac joined in 1686 its family in Lausanne, where it had settled following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes . It follows the college there, then the academy. It continues its studies of theology in Geneva (1693), but it is constrained to leave for Berlin, Bern (and Lausanne) imposing with the valid refugees to leave the country.

In 1694, he attends the university of Frankfurt-on-the Oder. In 1697, it is in charge of the old language teaching to the French college of Berlin. In hillock with the hostility of some pastors of the French Church of Berlin, it gives up the ministry to devote itself to the natural right, while continuing to teach with the college.

It translates the Right of the nature and people of Pufendorf, which it matches of a long foreword (1706), then the summary of the same author, duties of the Man and Citoïen (1707). Named in June 1710 with the new pulpit of right and history created to the academy of Lausanne, Barbeyrac is installed in March 1711 and pronounces a remarkable inaugural lesson Of dignitate and utilitate juris ac historiarum.

Follower of teaching in the vernacular language, it is in French that it gives his courses of natural right and history. Vice-chancellor of 1714 to 1717, it makes in this quality a Speech on the utility of the Letters and Sciences compared to the good of the State. Its main activity in Lausanne is the translation of the Right of the war and the peace of Grotius (Amsterdam, 1724). This work was worth a true celebrity to him.

In February 1717, Barbeyrac receives a call of the academy of Groningue. It accepts it and a few days before its departure, in May 1717, is made decree, in absentia, the title of utriusque doctor juris by the university of Basle. It passes the end of its life to Groningue, completing the translation of Grotius, then that of the philosophical Treaty of Loix natural of Richard Cumberland (1744).

The celebrity of Barbeyrac is due not only to her translations of major works of the natural right, which it contributed much to diffuse in the countries of French language, but still with its innovative manner to reconcile the reason and the Revelation. More moralist that lawyer, he is the pioneer of the natural right of reformed inspiration and French expression. Among its principal works, let us quote its Treaty of the Play (1709) and its Treaty of the morals of the Fathers (1728).

Bibliography

- PH. Meylan, Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744), 1937

- S.C. Othmer, Berlin und die Verbreitung of Naturrechts in Europa, 1970

- A. Dufour, the marriage in the French School of the natural right, 1976, spéc. 39-53

- J. - F. Poudret, “Of the teaching of the natural right to that of the substantive law”, in the teaching of the right to the Academy of Lausanne to the XVIII ^E and XIX ^E S. 1987,1-52