Life

He was born in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. He began practice as an advocate before the parlement

Parlement

Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

of Paris. Dumoulin turned Calvinist, and when the persecution of the Protestants began he went to Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, where for a long time he taught law at Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

, Besançon

Besançon

Besançon , is the capital and principal city of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It had a population of about 237,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2008...

 and elsewhere. He returned to France in 1557. After writing against the Council of Trent

Council of Trent

The Council of Trent was the 16th-century Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. It is considered to be one of the Church's most important councils. It convened in Trent between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563 in twenty-five sessions for three periods...

, he was imprisoned by order of the parlement until 1564.

Works

Dumoulin had, in 1552, written Commentaire sur l'édit du roi Henri II sur les petites dates, which was condemned by the Sorbonne, but his Conseil sur le fait du concile de Trente created a still greater stir, and aroused against him both the Catholics and the Calvinists.

It was as a jurist that Dumoulin gained his great reputation, being regarded by his contemporaries as the prince of jurisconsults. His remarkable erudition and breadth of view had a considerable effect on the subsequent development of French law. He was a bitter enemy of feudalism

Feudalism

Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...

, which he attacked in his Defendis (Paris, 1539).

Other important works were his commentaries on the customs of Paris (Paris, 1539, 1554; Frankfort

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

, 1575; Lausanne

Lausanne

Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...

, 1576), valuable as the only commentary on those in force in 1510, and the Extricatio labyrinthi dividui et individui, a treatise on the law of surety

Surety

A surety or guarantee, in finance, is a promise by one party to assume responsibility for the debt obligation of a borrower if that borrower defaults...

.

A collected edition of Dumoulin's works was published in Paris in 1681 (5 vols.)

Dumoulin prophesied about the fall of the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 in 2015.