BOUCHIER (BOUCHER), GILLES. - Jesuit scholar, born at Arras on 19 Oct. 1576, died at Tournai on 8 March 1665. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1598 and became superior and a renowned orator.
In the *Disputatio historica de primis Tungrorum seu Leodinsium episcopis*, included with other works in the first volume of *Qui gesta pontificum Tungrensium... scripserunt* by G. Chapeauville (Liège 1612), he argued that Maastricht was never a bishopric, a controversy that lasted a century. He was the first to establish securely the chronology of the Merovingians in the *Amatio de chronologia regum Francorum Merovedarum* (op. cit., II, ibid. 1613). He was also the first to publish the *Liberian Catalogue*, which was consequently also called the anonymous Bucherian Catalogue, and most of the *Chronograph of 354* (*De doctrina temporum, commentarius in Victorium Aquitanum... aliosque antiquos canonum paschalium scriptores* [Antwerp 1636], pp. 236-88 [cf. now the critical ed. by Th. Mommsen, in *MGH, Chronica Minora*, I, pp. 39-148]; other parts of the work in *PG* 10, 209-32; 885-902). He also wrote: *Belgium Rotamunt ecclesiasticum et civile* (Liège 1655), while the second volume, *Belgium Gallicum* (from 511 to Charles the Bald), remained in manuscript; it was intended as a commentary on Gregory of Tours, for which he was preparing an edition.