Jean Boutillier

Jean Boutillier, lord of Froidmont, French jurisconsult, would have been born in Pernes (Artois), in Mortagne or in Tournai, which was then a city of the Kingdom of France, around 1340 and died in 1395 in Tournai where he spent most of his life.

In 1383, he is mentioned as advisor of the city of Tournai and bailiff of Mortagne.

Biography

One can think that he would be a descendant of the artesian trouvère Colars Le Bouthillier whose arms are similar, but nothing authorizes to affirm that he was of noble lineage. He entered the scene in 1370 and began to collect citations. At this date he was appointed lieutenant of the Bailiff of Vermandois in Tournaisis. As a royal judge, he was in contact with the municipal justice of the burghers and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In 1383, he took the title of councilor of the city of Tournai and bailiff of Mortagne. He thus rendered justice in the châtellenie of Mortagne in the name of Lord Enguerrand VII, who died in 1396.

A few years later, in 1389, he left the post of bailiff of Mortagne, whose importance Charles VI had diminished, and became again the lieutenant of the great bailiff of Tournai. From then on, he never left his city and his last two children Jacques and Belotte and the tomb of Peronne, his daughter.

He wrote his will, in which he described himself as lieutenant of the governor of the bailliages of Tournai, Tournaisis and Mortagne, Saint-Amand, etc., on September 16, 1402, and his name is found for the last time at the wedding of Messire Étienne l'Hermite, lord of La Faye, and Dame Catherine de la Croix on January 25, 1419.

Works

He wrote his will but, according to A. Paillard de Saint Aiglan, also his epithalamium, massive poetry composed of twenty-nine quatrains in French impregnated with rouchi patois which one finds in the "Genealogy" of Nicholas des Champs, King of Arms of Philip II and Philip III, preserved in the Royal Library of Belgium, folios 366 verso 369.

The Somme rural

The tree of consanguinity, illuminated by Loyset Liédet, Somme rural (15th century)

He is the author of the Somme rural, a complete collection of the legislative uses and customs in use in the north of the Kingdom of France. This book, first published in manuscript form, was first published typographically in Bruges in 1479, then translated into Dutch and printed in that language in Delft in 1483.

In this work, Jean Boutillier highlights the legalistic spirit of the fourteenth century, which confused the maxims of Roman and feudal law: the first pages of the Somme rural refer to the scholarly distinction between jus in re and jus ad rem, while the objects of these rights are classified according to the distinction between hereditaments, movables and cateusis, notions that refer both to the Frankish opposition of hereditas and capita and to the Roman distinction between movable and immovable things.

He meticulously collected all the rulings rendered during twenty-two years by the parliament on the bailliages of Vermandois and Tournai, the last ones dating from 1407 and 1417.

His will is also a testimony of the customs of the beginning of the 15th century.

External links

• Works by Jean Boutillier at Gallica
• Somme Rural at Internet Archive