STEFANO di TOURNAL. - Bishop and jurist,
b. at Orléans in 1128, d. at Tournal in 1203.
After his first studies in his native city, he went to the University of Bologna (1145-50). Around 1155 he entered the Canons of S. Vittore of St-Euverte at Orléans. Having gone to Chartres to complete his education, in 1165 he was elected abbot of St-Euverte; in 1176, of S. Genoveffa in Parigi; and, after many diplomatic missions, in 1192 bishop of Tournal.
He wrote: Summa Deereiti (PL 211, 575-580; only the proemium), important for the comparative study of the juridical ideas of Bologna and Parigi; Quoddam figmentum Bononiae metrice compositum (L. Auvray, Un poème rythmique et une lettre d'Etienne de Tournal, in Mélanges Paul Fabre, Parigi 1902, p. 279 ff.), which won him a reputation as a good rhythmic poet; the numerous Epistolae (PL 211, 309-561), addressed to the most distinguished figures of the period, are of historical importance; Sermones (ibid., cols. 567-68: only two): 72 discourses, in which dialectic and mysticism are blended.