PASQUIER, ETIENNE. - Jurist and historian, born in Paris on 7 April 1529, died there on 31 August 1615.
He pleaded several cases of political importance, including that of the University of Paris against the Jesuits (1565), of whom he remained an opponent even when (1585) he held the office of advocate general of the Court of Audit, fighting them in a lively controversy begun with the Catéchisme des Jésuites (1602), condemned on 16 November by the Holy Office. Pasquier’s fame, however, is not so much bound to his work as an opponent of seigneurial abuses—conducted also 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 the first book of this work in 1560, after a serious illness that had forced him to interrupt his professional activity; subsequent editions in six books followed between 1569 and 1611, and posthumous ones in nine books from 1621 onward. A leading figure in France in his time, Pasquier was Gallican, anti-Machiavellian, and a staunch defender of “regalities.” He was favourable to the toleration of the Huguenot Church in France.