DUMOULIN

dumoulin, charles [molinaeus] (1500-1566), french jurist, was born in paris in 1500. he began practice as an advocate before the parlement of paris. dumoulin turned calvinist, and when the persecution of the protestants began he went to germany, where for a long time he taught law at strassburg, besancon and elsewhere. he returned to france in 1557. dumoulin had, in 1552, written _commentaire sur l'edit 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. he was imprisoned by order of the parlement until 1564. it was as a jurist that dumoulin gained his great reputation, being regarded by his contemporaries as the "prince of jurisconsults." his remarkable erudition and breadth of view had a considerable effect on the subsequent development of french law. he was a bitter enemy of feudalism, which he attacked in his _de feudis_ (paris, 1539). other important works were his commentaries on the customs of paris (paris, 1539, 1554; frankfort, 1575; lausanne, 1576), valuable as the only commentary on those in force in 1510, and the _extricatio labyrinthi dividui et individui_, a treatise on the law of surety. a collected edition of dumoulin's works was published in paris in 1681 (5 vols.).