(Claude), a celebrated antiquary in the 17th century, was descended of a good family at Dijon, where his brother was proctor-general of the chamber of accounts. Being inclined to the church, he became an ecclesiastic, and was made a canon in the holy chapel at Dijon; but devoted himself wholly to the study and knowledge of antique monuments. Having laid a proper foundation of learning at home, he resigned his canonry, and went to Rome, where he resided many years; and after his return to France, he held a correspondence with almost all the learned men in Europe. Perhaps there never was a man of letters who had so frequent and extensive a commerce with the learned men of his time as the Abbé Nicaise. This correspondence took up a great part of his time, and hindered him from enriching the public with any large works; but the letters which he wrote himself, and those which he received from others, would make a fine and curious Commercium Epistolicum. He published a Latin dissertation De Nummo Pentheos An Explication of an Antique Monument found at Guienne, in the diocese of Aach; and A Discourse upon the Form and Figure of the Syrens, which made a great noise. In this tract, following the opinion of Huet bishop of Avranches, he undertook to prove, that they were in reality birds, and not fishes or sea-monsters. He translated into French, from the Italian, a piece of Bellori, containing a description of the pictures in the Vatican, to which he added, A Dissertation upon the Schools of Athens and Parnassus, two of Raphael's pictures. He wrote also a final tract upon the ancient mosaics; and died while he was labouring to present the public with the explanation of that antique inscription, Minerva Arpae, which was found in the village of Velley, where he died in October 1701, aged 78.