PITHOU, PIERRE. – Jurist, born in Troyes on 10 Nov. 1539, died in Nogent-sur-Seine on 10 Nov. 1596. He completed his legal studies together with his brother François at the University of Bourges, under the guidance of Cujas.
Having become a lawyer, he did not practice for long, partly because, being a Calvinist, he had to wander through various cities. At Sedan he was entrusted by the Duke of Bouillon with drafting the customs of his domain. In 1571 he converted to Catholicism, at the same time as Henry IV of Bourbon, of whom he was a partisan. Subsequently he was appointed governor general of the Chamber of Justice in Guyenne, where he remained for several years; he then returned to Paris, continuing his legal research there. He played an effective role in securing the accession to the throne of Henry IV, and after the King’s entry into Paris he was entrusted with the office of procurator general to the provisional Parliament.
A champion of Gallican ideas, he advocated them in his work *Les libertés de l'Église gallicane* (Paris 1594), which was later drawn upon by subsequent supporters of Gallicanism. Besides this, he edited many literary and historical works (Quintilian, Petronius, Phaedrus, Paul the Deacon, Otto of Freising), as well as the *Novellae* of Justinian (Basel 1574), the *Leges Wisigothorum* (Paris 1579), the *Capitula* of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald (ibid. 1588); and, together with his brother François, the edition of the *Corpus Iuris Canonici*, published after his death (2 vols., ibid. 1687).
