Born in Le Cannet-des-Maures (dép. Var) near Draguignan, of which he considered himself a citizen, P. studied civil law at Montpellier around 1300, where one of his masters was Brémond de Montferrier. He became a famous lawyer, appearing in Provençal documents from 1303, was several times appointed investigator of local officers by the seneschal of Provence, and seems eventually to have become juge du palais at Marseilles from 1336 to 1340. He died shortly before June 1357.

P’s works include two lost treatises, De moneta and De consuetudine, and an undated De muneribus that Gouron dates between 1328 and 1343 and calls, somewhat unusually, a diversorium. This work survives in manuscript and two incunabula, and was included in TUI 1584 t.12. Although it is filled with citations to civilians and canonists both French and Italian, the work deals mainly with practical tax problems illustrated by examples from P’s native Provence. P. opposed the fiscal privileges of knights and married clergy, and his work is filled with fervent denunciations of the acts of local nobility and fiscal officers and of taxation by towns undertaken without the authority of the king. P. declared himself ‘pro pauperibus’, viewing the feudal system as a burdensome relic that had come to serve the interests of the few. As Gouron notes, this concern with social justice, as well as his vigorous, if somewhat crude, writing style, sets P. apart from other jurists of his day.

Source: A. Gouron, in DHJF.

Entry by: CD 11.v.2019

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