PASQUIER, ÉTIENNE. - Jurist and historian, b. in Paris on 7 April 1529, d. there on 31 Aug. 1615.

He pleaded various cases of political importance, among them that of the University of Paris against the Jesuits (1563), of whom he remained an opponent even when (1585) he held the office of advocate-general of the Court of Accounts, attacking them in a lively polemic begun with the Catechisme des Jésuites (1602), condemned on 16 Nov. by the Holy Office. P.'s fame, however, is linked not so much to his work as an opponent of seigneurial abuses, also conducted as a member of the Grands jours or extraordinary Assizes of Poitiers (1580) and Troyes (1583), as to the material of historical erudition gathered and critically sifted in the Recherches de la France. He published its first book in 1560, after a serious illness that had forced him to interrupt his professional activity; editions in six books followed between 1569 and 1611, and others, posthumous, in nine, from 1621 onward. A leading figure in the France of his time, P. was Gallican, anti-Machiavellian, a determined defender of "royalty." He was in favor of permitting the Huguenot Church in France.

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: the best ed. of the Recherches is the one, in two vols., Amsterdam 1723; Ch. Giraud published the unpublished Interprétation des Institutes de Justinien, Paris 1847, and L. Feugère a selection of the major work with the Notice et bibliographie des oeuvres choisies d'E. P., ibid. 1849. Cf. A. Chamberland, E. P. et l'intolérance religieuse du XVIe siècle, in Rev. d'hist. mod. et contemp., 1 (1899), pp. 38-49; P. de Nothac, Un ami de Ronsard: E. P. et les Jésuites, in Rev. d'hist. littér. de la France, 33 (1926), pp. 87-97; M. J. Moore, E. P. historien de la poésie et de la langue française, Poitier 1934; R. Bütler, Nationales und universales Denken im Werke E. P. s. Basel 1948 (with the most recent bibl.).

Enzo Bottasso

@incollection{ec9_pasquier_etienne, author = {Bottasso, Enzo}, title = {Pasquier, etienne}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {907}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/pasquier-etienne} }

One of some 20,000 entries brought back from the twelve printed volumes (1948–54). Spotted something? Help us improve it.

Pasquier, Étienne

About this entry