Pierre Pithou

Pierre Pithou (1 November 1539 – 1 November 1596) was a French lawyer and scholar. He is also known as Petrus Pithoeus.

Life

He was born at Troyes. From childhood he loved literature, and his father Pierre encouraged this interest. Young Pithou was called to the Paris bar in 1560. On the outbreak of the second war of religion in 1567, Pithou, who was a Calvinist, withdrew to Sedan, France and afterwards to Basel, returning to France on the publication of the edict of pacification. Soon afterwards he accompanied the duc de Montmorency on his embassy to England, returning shortly before the massacre of St Bartholomew, in which he narrowly escaped with his life. Next year he followed the example of the future Henry IV of France by abjuring the Protestant faith.

Shortly after his accession to the throne, Henry recognized Pithou's talents and services by giving him various legal appointments. He co-operated in publishing the Satire Ménippée (1593), which did much to damage the cause of the Catholic League; the harangue of the Sieur d'Aubray is usually attributed to Pithou.

Pithou wrote many legal and historical books, besides preparing editions of several ancient writers. His earliest publication was Adversariorum subsectorum lib. II. (1565). In 1569, he became the first to publish Landolfus Sagax' Historia Romana, and under the name by which it became better known: Historia Miscella. Perhaps his edition of the Leges Visigothorum (1579) was his most valuable contribution to historical science; in the same line he edited the Capitula of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Charles the Bald in 1588; he assisted his brother François in preparing the Corpus juris canonici (1687).

Pierre's Libertés de l'église gallicane (1594) is reprinted in his Opera sacra juridica his orica miscellanea collecta (1609). In classical literature he was the first who made the world acquainted with the Fables of Phaedrus (1596).

Pithou contributed to the study of Livy, in collating a manuscript against the edition of Sigonius, and adding notes. It was not published, but has been cited as "Excerpta-", "Exc-" and "notulae Pithoei", and remains in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

He died at Nogent-sur-Seine. His valuable library, specially rich in manuscripts, was for the most part transferred to what is now the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

Family

Three of Pierre Pithou's brothers acquired distinction as jurists: Nicolas, with his twin, Jean co-authored the treatise, Institution du mariage chrétien. François Pithou, the youngest, wrote Glossarium ad libros capitularium (1588) and Traité de l'excommunication et de l'interdit, etc. (1587).

Works

• Charlemagne empereur d'Occident.
• Généalogie des comtes héréditaires de Troyes et de Meaulx, ou de Champaigne et Brie, qui furent aussi Roys de Navarre.
• Bref recueil des évêques de Troyes. (Signé: P. Pithoeus... [1572].).
• Fragmenta quaedam Papiniani, Pauli, Ulpiani, Gaii, Modestini, aliorumque veterum iuris auctorum (in Latin). Paris: Robert Etienne. 1573.
• Satire Ménippée, 1593.
  • Satyre Ménippée: de la vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne et de la tenue des estats de Paris, Éd. Charles Labitte, Œuvres & Valsery, Ressouvenances, 1841; 1997 ISBN 978-2-90442-973-6.
  • Satyre Menippee de la Vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne et de la tenue des Estats de Paris, éd. critique de Martial Martin, Paris, H. Champion, 2007, « Textes de la Renaissance », n° 117, ISBN 978-2-74531-484-0.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Pierre Pithou — A writer, born at Troyes, 1 Nov. 1539; died at Nogent-sur-Seine, 1 Nov., 1596. His father, a distinguished lawyer, had secretly embraced Calvinism. Pierre studied the classics in Paris under Turnèbe, and afterwards with his brother, François Pithou, attended lectures in law at Bourges and Valence under Cujas, who often said: Pithœi fratres, clarissima lumina. In 1560 he was admitted to practise at the Paris bar; but on the outbreak of the second war of religion, he withdrew to Troyes. Not being admitted to the bar at Troyes on account of his Calvinist belief, he withdrew to Sedan which was a Protestant district, and, at the request of the Duc de Bouillon, he codified the legal customs into the form of laws. He then proceeded to Basle, where he published Otto de Freisingen's "Vie de Frédéric Barberousse" and Warnfrid's" Historia Miscellanea". After the Edict of Pacification of 1570 he returned to France, escaped during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and, in 1573, joined the Catholic Church. In the struggles between the future Henry IV and the League. he was an ardent adherent of Henry; he collaborated in the production of the "Satire Ménippée", and being skilled in canon law, made a study, in an anonymous letter published in 1593, of the right of the French bishops to absolve Henry IV without consulting the pope. In 1594 he published an epoch-making work "Les libertés de l'église gallicane". For the first time the maxims of Gallicanism were really codified, in eighty-three articles, The first edition was dedicated to Henry IV. The permission to publish the edition of 1651 under Louis XIV contains these words: "We wish to show our favour to a work of so great importance for the rights of our crown". Pithou's book was the basis of the Four Articles of 1682. D'Aguesseau declared that the book was "the palladium of France", President Hénault, that "the maxims of Pithou have in a sense the force of laws". An edict of 1719, and a decree of the Parliament of Dauphiné on 21 April, 1768, ordered the enforcement of certain articles in Pithou's book, as if these eighty-three articles were legal enactments. They were reprinted by Dupin in 1824.

Henry IV appointed Pithou procurator general of the Parliament of Paris; but he soon resigned the post, preferring to return to his juristic and literary studies. He edited Salvian, Quintilian, Petronius, Phædrus, the Capitularies of Charlemagne, and the "Corpus juris canonici". His brother François (1541-1621), who became a Catholic in 1578, wrote in 1587 a treatise on "The greatness of the rights, and of the preeminence of the kings and the kingdom of France", and was distinguished for his fanatical hostility to the Jesuits. Pierre Pithou, more equitable, saved the Jesuits from some of the dangers that threatened them for a short time after the attempted assassination of Henry IV by Châtel.

GROSLEY, Vie de Pierre Pithou (Paris, 1756); DUPIN, Libertés de l'Eglise gallicane (Paris, 1824), preface.

Bibliography

Attribution

External links

• Works by or about Pierre Pithou at the Internet Archive