Bouchier (Boucher), Gilles

BOUCHIER (BOUCHER), GILLES. - Jesuit scholar, b. at Arras on 19 Oct. 1576, d. at Tournai on 8 March 1665. Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1598, he was a superior and a renowned orator.

In the Disputatio historica de primis Tungrorum seu Leodiensium episcopis, inserted together with other works in vol. I of the Qui gesta pontificum Tungrensium... scripserunt of G. Chapeauville (Liège 1612), he maintains that Maastricht was never a bishopric, a controversy that lasted a century. He was the first to trace with certainty the chronology of the Merovingians in the Annotatio de chronologia regum Francorum Merovendarum (op. cit., II, ibid. 1613). He was also the first to publish the Liberian Catalogue, which for that reason was also called the anonymous Bucherian catalogue, and most of the Chronographer of 354 (De doctrina temporum, commentarius in Victorium Aquitanum... aliosque antiquae canonum paschalium scriptores [Antwerp 1636], pp. 236-88 [cf. now the critical edition of 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 Romanum ecclesiasticum et civile (Liège 1655), while vol. II, Belgium Gallicum (from 511 to Charles the Bald), remained in manuscript, as did a commentary on Gregory of Tours, of which he was preparing an edition.

Mario Calpo