Charles Dumoulin

Charles Dumoulin (Du Moulin, Molinaeus) (1500–1566) was a French jurist. He was surnamed by some of his contemporaries the "French Papinian".

Life He was born in Paris. He began practice as an advocate before the parlement of Paris from 1522 to 1535 and later taught law at various places. After he turned Lutheran and later Calvinist, he was forced into exile for many years, with stays in Basel, Geneva, Tübingen, Strasbourg, Besançon, and elsewhere. He returned to Paris in 1557 but had to flee again in 1562. After writing against the Council of Trent, he was imprisoned by order of the parlement until 1564. He converted back to Catholicism on his deathbed.

Works

Dumoulin was a prolific writer on legal, theological, and other topics. His legal writings (on Roman law, canon law, customary law) gained him greatest reputation. His remarkable erudition and breadth of view had a considerable effect on the subsequent development of French law. At the same time, several of this works stirred considerable controversy, and some were condemned by Lutherans, Calvinists and/or Catholics for religious reasons.

Dumoulin was a bitter enemy of feudalism, which he attacked in his De Feudis (Paris, 1539).

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.

Editions (In this as in many other exemplars, some of Dumoulin's comments are censored because they were perceived negatively by the papacy.)

Caroli Molinaei... opera quae extant omnia (Paris, 1658), 4 vols. Caroli Molinaei... opera quae extant omnia (Paris, 1681), 5 vols.