HOTTINGER, JOHANN HEINRICH (1620-1667), Swiss philologist and theologian, was born at Zürich on the 10th of March 1620. He studied at Geneva, Groningen and Leiden, and after visiting France and England was in 1642 appointed professor of church history in his native town. The chair of Hebrew at the Carolinum was added in 1643, and in 1653 he was appointed professor ordinarius of logic, rhetoric and theology. He gained such a reputation as an Oriental scholar that the elector palatine in 1655 appointed him professor of Oriental languages and biblical criticism at Heidelberg. In 1661, however, he returned to Zürich, where in 1662 he was chosen principal of the university. In 1667 he accepted an invitation to succeed Johann Hoornbeck (1617-1666) as professor in the university of Leiden, but he was drowned with three of his children by the upsetting of a boat while crossing the river Limmat. His chief works are Historia ecclesiastica Nov. Test. (1651-1667); Thesaurus philologicus seu clavis scripturae (1649; 3rd ed. 1698); Etymologicon orientale, sive lexicon harmonicum heptaglotton (1661). He also wrote a Hebrew and an Aramaic grammar.
His son, Johann Jakob Hottinger (1652-1735), who became professor of theology at Zürich in 1698, was the author of a work against Roman Catholicism, Helvetische Kirchengeschichte (4 vols., 1698-1729); and his grandson, Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1681-1750), who in 1721 was appointed professor of theology at Heidelberg, wrote a work on dogmatics, Typus doctrinae christianae (1714).
HOUBRAKEN, JACOBUS (1698-1780), Dutch engraver, was born at Dort, on the 25th of December 1698. All that his father, Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719), bequeathed to him was a fine constitution and a pure love for work. In 1707 he came to reside at Amsterdam, where for years he had to struggle incessantly against difficulties. He commenced the art of engraving by studying the works of Cornelis Cort, Suyderhoef, Edelinck and the Visschers. He devoted himself almost entirely to portraiture. Among his best works are scenes from the comedy of De Ontdekte Schijndeugd, executed in his eightieth year, after Cornelis Troost, who was called by his countrymen the Dutch Hogarth. He died on the 14th of November 1780.
See A. Ver Hull, Jacobus Houbraken et son œuvre (Arnhem, 1875), where 120 engraved works are fully described.
HOUDENC (or Houdan), RAOUL DE, 12th-century French trouvère, takes his name from his native place, generally identified with Houdain (Artois), though there are twelve places bearing the name in one or other of its numerous variants. It has been suggested that he was a monk, but from the scattered hints in his writings it seems more probable that he followed the trade of jongleur and recited his chansons, with small success apparently, in the houses of the great. He was well acquainted with Paris, and probably spent a great part of his life there. His undoubted works are: Le Songe d’enfer, La Voie de paradis, Le Roman des eles (pr. by A. Scheler in Trouvères belges, New Series, 1897) and the romance of Méraugis de Portlesguez, edited by M. Michelant (1869) and by Dr M. Friedwagner (Halle, 1897). Houdenc was an imitator of Chrétien de Troyes; and Huon de Méri, in his Tournoi de l’antéchrist (1226) praises him with Chrétien in words that seem to imply that both were dead. Méraugis de Portlesguez, the hero of which perhaps derives his name from Lesguez, the port of Saint Brieuc in Brittany, is a roman d’aventures loosely attached to the Arthurian cycle.
See Gaston Paris in Hist. litt. de la France, xxx. 220-237; W. Zingerlé, Über Raoul de Houdenc und seine Werke (Erlangen, 1880); and O. Boerner, Raoul de Houdenc. Eine stilistische Untersuchung (1885).