FOURNIER, PAUL-EUGÈNE-LOUIE. — Canonist and historian of law, born in Calais on 26 November 1853, died in Paris on 13 May 1935. A graduate paleographer-archivist of the École des Chartes (1879), he obtained a law degree from the University of Paris (1880), was professor of Roman law at the University of Grenoble (1880–1914), and of legal history and subsequently canon law at the University of Paris (1914–35); corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Munich (1901) and of the Accademia dei Lincei of Rome (1924), member of the Académie des inscriptions (1911), doctor honoris causa of the Universities of Louvain (1911) and Oxford (1931), and president of the Society of Legal History (1914).
A leading representative of the historical and juridical culture of his country, he occupies a prominent place among the most eminent modern scholars of the history of canon law. He devoted his studies in particular to the canonical sources of the darkest period, extending from the compilation of the Pseudo-Isidore to Gratian’s Decretum, and to canonistic literature up to the middle of the thirteenth century. The results of his research in this field possess genuinely pre-eminent value and are embodied in several important monographs, numerous studies and articles in various journals to which he was a valued contributor, and especially in his masterpiece: History of the Canonical Collections in the West from the False Decretals to the Decree of Gratian (in collaboration with M. G. Le Bras, Paris 1931–32). Among his principal other works are: The Official Courts in the Middle Ages, a Study of the Organization, Jurisdiction, and Procedure of the Ordinary Ecclesiastical Courts in France from 1280 to 1338 (there 1880); The Kingdom of Arles and Vienne (1338–1378), a Study of the Territorial Formation of France in the East and Southeast (there 1891).