IMBART DE LA TOUR, PIERRE-GILBERT-JEAN-MARIE. - French historian, b. Aug. 22, 1860, at Valenton (Seine-et-Oise), d. Dec. 18, 1925, in Paris. A student of the École normale supérieure and of Fustel de Coulanges, he specialized in the study of medieval history, particularly the religious history of France during that period.
Professor at Bordeaux from 1885 to 1910, and a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences from 1909, he is chiefly remembered for two monographs on medieval history: one on ecclesiastical immunities in the Carolingian age (*Les immunités accordées aux Églises à l’époque carolingienne*, Paris, 1890), and the other on episcopal elections (*Les élections épiscopales dans l’Église de France du IXe au XIIe siècle*, ibid., 1891). His most important work, however, is that on the origins of the Protestant "Reformation," published in several volumes but unfortunately left unfinished (*Les origines de la réforme*, ibid., 1905–35: 4 vols., the last published posthumously).