Jean Bouhier (jurist)
Encyclopedia
Jurist
A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
, historian, translator, bibliophile and scholar. He served as the first président à mortier
Président à mortier
The office of président à mortier was one of the most important legal posts of the French ancien régime. The présidents were principal magistrates of the highest juridical institutions, the parlements, which were the appeal courts....
to the parlement de Bourgogne from 1704 to 1728, when he resigned to devote himself to his historic and literary work following his 1727 election to the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
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Life
From the rich BouhierBouhier
Bouhier is a French surname. Notable people with the name include:*Jean Bouhier , président à mortier to the Parlement de Bourgogne and writer*Jean Bouhier , first bishop of Dijon...
family (his brother Claude Bouhier de Lantenay
Claude Bouhier de Lantenay
Claude Bouhier de Lantenay was a French clergyman and the second bishop of Dijon after his uncle Jean Bouhier.-Family:...
became the second bishop of Dijon in 1744), Jean Bouhier had a vast network of correspondents right across Europe. The Eltons write of him:
He was renowned as much for his erudition as for the splendid library he had inherited from his ancestors, which he expanded and put at the disposal of the poets and writers he welcomed to his hôtel on rue Vauban in Dijon. At the end of his life the library held 35,000 works and 2,000 manuscripts, but all his collections were dispersed after his death and were mostly sold to Clairvaux Abbey
Clairvaux Abbey
Clairvaux Abbey is a Cistercian monastery in Ville-sous-la-Ferté, 15 km from Bar-sur-Aube, in the Aube département in northeastern France. The original building, founded in 1115 by St. Bernard, is now in ruins; a high-security prison, the Clairvaux Prison, now occupies the grounds...
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Main works
Besides his treatise on Burgundian costume (considered his masterpiece), Jean Bouhier was the author of several works on jurisprudence as well as many dissertations. He also translated Latin classical texts, some in collaboration with the abbé d’OlivetPierre-Joseph Thoulier d'Olivet
Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d'Olivet, Abbot of Olivet was a French abbot, writer, grammarian and translator. He was elected the fourth occupant of Académie française seat 31....
, though Bouhier's translations were more appreciated by his contemporaries for their closeness to the original than for their style - his wife said to him "You take care of thinking, and leave me with the writing"
D’Alembert
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
said of him :
History and jurisprudence
- Traité de la succession des mères en vertu de l’édit de Saint-Maur, avec une dissertation sur les droits de la mère en la succession de ses enfans, au cas de la substitution pupillaire, principalement par rapport à l’usage du Parlement de Dijon (1726)
- Dissertation sur la représentation en succession, suivant la coutume du duché de Bourgogne, avec une explication de l’article XXV de la même coutume (1734)
- Traité de la dissolution du mariage pour cause d’impuissance, avec quelques pièces curieuses sur le même sujet (1735)
- Supplément au Journal du règne d’Henri IVHenry IV of FranceHenry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
, depuis le 2 août 1589 jusques au 1er avril 1594 ; depuis le 1er de l’an 1598 jusques en 1602 et depuis le 1er de janvier 1607 jusques au mois de juin 1610 (1737) - Les Coutumes du duché de BourgogneDuchy of BurgundyThe Duchy of Burgundy , was heir to an ancient and prestigious reputation and a large division of the lands of the Second Kingdom of Burgundy and in its own right was one of the geographically larger ducal territories in the emergence of Early Modern Europe from Medieval Europe.Even in that...
, avec les anciennes coutumes tant générales que locales de la même province (2 volumes 1742-46) - Œuvres de jurisprudence (2 volumes, 1787–88)
Translations
- Tusculanes de Cicéron (The Tusculanae QuaestionesTusculanae QuaestionesThe Tusculanae Disputationes , is a series of books written by Cicero, around 45 BC, attempting to popularise Stoic philosophy in Ancient Rome...
of CiceroCiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
, 1737) - Poëme de Pétrone sur la guerre civile entre César et Pompée, avec deux épîtres d’Ovide, en vers français, avec des remarques et des conjonctures sur le poëme intitulé "Pervigilium Veneris" (Poem by PetroniusPetroniusGaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...
on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, with two letters by OvidOvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, in French verse, with remarks and conjectures on the poem entitled Pervigilium VenerisPervigilium VenerisPervigilium Veneris, the Vigil of Venus, is a Latin poem, probably written in the 4th century. It is generally thought to have been by the poet Tiberianus, due to strong similarities with the latter’s poem Amnis ibat. It was written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three-nights'...
', 1737) - Les Amours d’Énée et de Didon, poëme traduit de Virgile, avec diverses autres imitations d’anciens poëtes grecs et latins (The Loves of AeneasAeneasAeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...
and Dido, poem translated from VirgilVirgilPublius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, with several imitations of ancient Greek and Latin poets, 1742) - Remarques sur Cicéron (Remarks on Cicero, 1746)
- Recherches et dissertations sur Hérodote (Researches and dissertations on HerodotusHerodotusHerodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, 1746)
Memoirs and correspondence
- Souvenirs de Jean Bouhier, président au Parlement de Dijon, extraits d’un manuscrit autographe inédit et contenant des détails curieux sur divers personnages des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle (1866)
- Correspondance littéraire (1974)