PIROT, Louis — New Testament exegete, b. Châteauroux 10 July 1881, d. Lille 5 Dec. 1939. He taught Sacred Scripture at the Major Seminary of Bourges, then at the Faculty of Theology in Lille (1920).
Military chaplain during the war of 1914–18, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour (1915). Canon of Bourges (1924) and of Lille (1937), he also served as a consultor to the Biblical Commission (8 Apr. 1935). While teaching Sacred Scripture, he fulfilled the duties of chaplain to the Carmel of Bourges (1918–20), of Lille (1920–22), spiritual director and lecturer at the Collège des Dames bernardines d’Esquermes d’Ollignies in Tournai (1922–39).
Fr Pirot is known for the supplement to the Dictionnaire de la Bible begun in 1922, in which he personally compiled forty articles, and for La Sainte Bible, published serially from 1935; he himself contributed the commentary on Mark. He was a regular contributor to L’Année clergiale (1911–39) through biblical articles and chronicles. Other writings: L’œuvre exégétique de Théodore de Mopsueste (Rome 1913); Les Actes des Apôtres et la Commission biblique (Paris 1919); St Jean (ibid. 1923); Iulius Africanus (in DTHC, VIII [1925], cols. 1971–76). He compiled the first two chapters of Ch. Poulet’s Histoire du christianisme (Paris 1932, fasc. 1), contributed a study on La foi de la première génération chrétienne en Jésus in G. Bardy–A. Tricot, Le Christ (ibid. 1932), pp. 373–92, and the chapter on Inspiration in A. Robert–A. Tricot, Initiation biblique (ibid. 1939), pp. 9–27.