NOODT, GERHARD (1647-1725), a celebrated jurist, was born at Nimeguen in 1647. He began his studies in his native town, continued them at Leyden and Utrecht, and finished them at Franeker, where he took his doctor's degree in law. After passing through successive grades of promotion he was ultimately appointed to a law chair at Leyden. It was in the character of a writer on jurisprudence, however, that he acquired his reputation. His Latin style, modelled after the best writers, was pure and precise ; he had, for his time, an intimate acquaintance with the laws, manners, and customs of ancient Rome ; his speculations were guided by a simple desire for truth, and his political opinions animated by a spirit of unusual toleration. His numerous works, as they successively appeared, soon rose to the rank of standard authorities. Two of his political treatises were translated into French by Barbeyrac, and appeared at Amsterdam in 1707 and 1714, under the respective titles of Pouvoir des Souverains and Liberte de Conscience ; and his jurisprudential writings, to which he was still adding when cut off in 1725, were held in high estimation, not in Holland only, but also in Germany and Scotland, till quite the end of last century. The first edition of his collected works was published at Leyden in 1724, and the last in 1767. That of 1735 and those subsequent contain a life of the author by Barbeyrac.