Nicolas Barnaud[1] (1538–1604) was a French Protestant writer, physician and alchemist, from Crest, in Dauphiné, from which he took the name Delphinas (or Delphinus).
His 1597 collection Commentariolum in Aenigmaticum quoddam Epitaphium,[2][3] on the Aelia Laelia Crispis puzzle inscription, included the alchemical Mass of Nicholas Melchior, still of disputed authorship.
This has led to suggestions that he was setting up some sort of hermetic network, on the fabled lines of the Rosicrucians.
[6] Nicolas Barnaud is supposed to have lodged with Tadeáš Hájek, during a stay in Prague in the 1580s or 1590s, meeting Anselmus de Boodt (1550-1632).
Earlier in life he played an itinerant role as a Calvinist activist, in Geneva and Holland.