P. Arabeyre has shown that the author of the works attributed to ‘Joannes de Selva Galli’ in TUI 1584 are not by the well-known Jean de Selve (1475–1529), a scion of a noble family from the Bas Limousin, who entered royal service as a lawyer at an early age, became a confidant of, and a diplomat for, François I, and ended his life as premier président of the parlement of Paris (1520–1529). They are, rather, by his (probably) elder brother, a doctor of both laws, who became a counsellor in the parlement of Paris in 1511 and died in 1521. Before learning this, we wondered in our note to De iureiurado (t.4) how the better-known Jean de Selve could possibly have found the time to write the treatise. The answer is that he did not. The article in French Wikipedia evinces some confusion between the two by not recognizing the existence of the elder, but adds plausibility to proposition that there were two Jeans by noting that the better-known Jean was his father’s eighth child, the first of a second marriage.

Source: P. Arabeyre, in DHJF 923–924; French Wikipedia.

Entry by: CD/DC v.2017

TUI database