BRIDAINE, JACQUES, a celebrated French preacher and home-missionary, was born in 1701 at Chuslau in the department of Gard. Though a rigid Catholic in principle, he gained the good-will of the Protestants of France, by the boldness with which he advocated their cause on many occasions, and the personal kindness which he displayed towards many of their number during the persecutions to which they were exposed under the Regent Orleans and Louis XV. He accomplished no fewer than 250 evangelizing journeys through various parts of France, in the course of which he made himself universally popular. He was the author of a collection of Cantiques Spirituels, which has been frequently reprinted, and of five volumes of sermons, printed at Avignon in 1825. In the neighbourhood of this town he died in 1767.