PITHOU, PIERRE

PITHOU, PIERRE. — Jurist, born at Troyes on 1 November 1539, died at Nogent-sur-Seine on 1 November 1596. He pursued his legal studies together with his brother François at the University of Bourges, under Cuiacius.

Having become a lawyer, he did not practise the profession for long, partly because, as a Calvinist, he had to move from city to city. At Sédan he was commissioned by the duke of Bouillon to draw up the customs of his domain. In 1571 he converted to Catholicism, at the same time as Henri IV of Bourbon, whose partisan he was. Subsequently he was appointed governor general of the Chamber of Justice of Guienna, where he remained for several years; he then returned to Paris, continuing his legal investigations there. He worked effectively for the accession of Henri IV to the throne and, after the King’s entry into Paris, was appointed procureur général to the temporarily established Parliament.

A supporter of Gallican ideas, he advocated them in the work Les libertés de l'Église gallicane (Paris 1594), on which later proponents of Gallicanism drew. In addition to editing many literary and historical works (Quintilian, Petronius, Phaedrus, Paulus Diaconus, Otto of Freising), he prepared the edition of the Novellae giustiniane (Basel 1574), the Leges Wisigothorum (Paris 1579), and the Caroli Magni, Ludovici Pii et Caroli Calvi Capitula (ibid. 1588); and, together with his brother François, the edition of the Corpus Iuris Canonici, published after his death (2 vols., ibid. 1687).

(from F. Cabral, Histoire du card. P., Paris 1881, frontispiece)