Tanneguy Lefebvre , known as Tanaquillus Faber , born with Caen in 1615 and died in Saumur the September 12th, 1672, was a Philologue and Traducteur hellenist French.

Tanneguy Lefebvre made its studies with the college of the Jésuites of the Arrow After having completed its studies with Paris, it was named controller of the royal printing works of the Louvre by the cardinal Richelieu who wanted to make the main thing of a college of it that it wanted to found. After the death of Richelieu, it left Paris and travelled before being made Protesting in 1644. It settled in Saumur in 1649 where it obtained, two years later, a post of professor with the Protestant academy. It initially occupied with great success this station nearly twenty years as regent of Troisième, then like holder of a pulpit of Greek created especially for him in 1665. It also held pension for the pupils of the academy, whose André Dacier which was to marry has girl.

It also represented the church reformed with the synod of the Poitou. Its deep scholarship the met in correspondence with many scholars of the time, of which Gronow, Household or Pellisson, which calls upon its lights and protect it. Pellisson even anonymously made him pay a pension of one hundred ecus. Colbert also will make him allot a pension of 1000 pounds in 1665. It could have obtained much more but its religion always made obstacle with many favors.

Its mania to put Greek or Latin terms where it did not find an equivalent French it made depict by Molière in the erudite Women under the features of Vadius .

Its increasing bad health and a certain moral laxism (it had a mistress in Saumur for which it wrote Latin worms which ran by the city) reflects it in cold with his/her colleagues of the academy. Far from arranging the things, its own catch of distance with respect to the Calvinism and led to a quarrel with the consistory which led it to resign of his station the October 25th 1670.

It accepted offers on behalf of universities of England, Leyde and Strasbourg eager to obtain its services. At the same time, its compatriot Huet sought to obtain his abjuration, which it obtained the May 20th 1671 but it refused to make his conversion public. He was, like wrote Voltaire, surely “more philosopher that huguenot”. He was besides, when he died suddenly whereas he had just accepted a station at the university of Heidelberg, buried in the protesting cemetery of Bilange.

Lefebvre published at least 37 works, of which editions, inter alia, of various nonconformist Greek authors like Longin, Anacréon, Sappho, Apollodore of Athens, Aristophane or Lucien and Latin like Virgile, Horace, Lucrèce, Terence or Tite-Live.

One of his/her daughters, Anne Dacier, became famous as translator of Greek. His/her son, Tanneguy II Lefebvre (Saumur, 1658 - Saumur, 1717), was him also regent with the college of Saumur, before becoming Pasteur in Suisse and England then to return to Saumur after having abjured.

Works

• Epistolae Criticae (1659)
• Lives of the Greek poets (1665)
• Method to begin Greek and Latin humanities. Saumur: Rene Péan, 1670
• Τα του Ανακρεοντοσ και Σαππηουσ μελε. Noted & animadversiones addidit Tanaquillus Faber; in quibus multa veterum emendantur. Saumur: Rene Péan, 1680