1910 Reviews

Oulmont, C., Estienne Forcadel, un juriste, historien et poete vers 1550 (Book Review)

Gerig, John L.

The fame of Estienne Forcadel rests mainly on the fact that he was preferred for a professorship of law by the faculty of Toulouse to the great Cujas. He has been well characterised as a mauvais jurisconsulte, mais pire poète. Patriotic Toulousans have long protested against this reproach cast upon their university, and many have attempted to prove that it is unjust. It is needless to add that M. Oulmont, influenced by civic patriotism, maintains that this celebrated dispute "n'est qu'une légende." He advances as proof for this statement that towards the end of 1554–the year when the controversy is supposed to have taken place—Cujas was already at Bourges, and that it was two years later, the 7th of September, 1556, when Forcadel was elected unanimously to this professorship. Notwithstanding this argument, documents in the archives of the Parliament of Toulouse show that Cujas was a candidate for the place. The Parliament of Toulouse was regarded by all humanists as more conservative than that of Paris. We can easily pardon the Faculty of Law for this earlier error of judgment in view of the invitation later extended to Cujas, and the esteem in which it held the great jurists, François Roaldès and Guillaume Maran.