Jacques Cujas

Jacques Cujas (or Cujaus ) known as Cujas , Jurisconsult French, born with Toulouse in 1520 or 1522 and died in Bourges the October 4th 1590.

Biography

Resulting from a modest milieu of Toulouse, Cujas follows the lessons of Arnaud of Ferrier in his birthplace. At the end of its studies, it opens a course of right and obtains a solid reputation, in particular thanks to its comment of the Institutes of Justinien.

Not being able to obtain the pulpit of Roman law to Toulouse, it leaves for Cahors, then Bourges in 1555 - called in this last city by Michel of Hospital, then chancellor of Marguerite de Valois. It must face there the hostility of François Douaren, law professor in the same city. After two stays with Valence, then with Paris in 1576, it settles definitively in Bourges. By making the interpretation of the Latin texts, he seeks to replace the Roman law in his historical context.

Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy, Duke of Savoy, attracted it with Turin, and gave him more the famous brands of its regard. The pope Gregoire XIII invites it to settle in Rome in 1584, but he refuses. He then returns its to fix at Bourges, where he has an extraordinary number schoolboys; he was not satisfied to inform them, but he often assists them his own purse.

Its scholarship, the clearness of its writings and its teaching always made the admiration of its pupils. Cujas was a long time the oracle of the jurisconsults: it often was considered that nobody had penetrated front any more in the knowledge and the explanation of the Roman laws, nor written the Latin language with more purity.

Its Œuvres , which consists mainly in the Commentaires on the Corpus juris , had several editions: the best is that of Charles Annibal Fabrot, Paris, 1658, reprinted with Venice, 1758, 10 folio volumes, and with Prato, 1836 - 1847, 13 volumes in-8.

Its life was written by Scévole of Holy-Marthe, Papire Masson and Berryat-St-Price. Toulouse set up a statue in to him 1850. A legal publisher bears its name (editions Cujas). A street in Paris also bears its name (in the 5th district, close to the the Pantheon) as well as famous the college library of right which is there.

It had as pupils, inter alia, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Joseph Juste Scaliger, Antoine Loysel, Paul de Foix, Pierre Pithou, Guy de Pibrac and Etienne Pasquier. This last would have said about its Master: “Large Cujas does not have and will never have by adventure its similar”.

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