1025 



THIBAUT. 



THIEAUT, ANTON JUSTUS. 



pagne and Brie. He was however, on account of his wealth, too 

 desirable an ally to be lost without an endeavour to regain him. 

 Overtures of reconciliation were made, in consequence of which Count 

 Thibaut engaged in 1231, to take to wife the daughter of Pierre of 

 Bretagne. Thibaut had been twice married before ; in his eighteenth 

 year to Gertrude, daughter of the Count of Metz, from whom he 

 was divorced, and afterwards to Agnes de Beaujeau, by whom ho 

 had a daughter. The regent, fearing the consequences of this recon- 

 ciliation, interfered to break it off. The marriage-day had been fixed, 

 and the bridegroom was already on his way to the place where it was 

 to be celebrated, when letters from the king, forbidding him to con- 

 clude the engagement, were delivered to him. He obeyed the royal 

 mandate. 



This insult determined the confederates to carry into execution 

 their original project. They sent for the queen of Cyprus, and 

 invaded Champagne, avowedly for the purpose of putting her in pos- 

 session of it. The king marched to the assistance of Thibaut, and 

 under his auspices a compromise was arranged. Thibaut ceded to the 

 queen of Cyprus lands to the value of 2000 livres yearly, and paid her 

 in addition 20,000,000 of livres in money. This sum was advanced by 

 the king, who received in return the estates of Sancerre and others 

 which Thibaut's father had held before he acquired Champagne. 



Here seems the proper place to notice the stories told by Matthew 

 of Paris regarding the loves of Thibaut and Queen Blanche, and the 

 poisoning of Louis VIII., laid to the charge of the former. Matthew 

 only mentions the accusation as a; rumour he had heard. No other 

 historian of equal antiquity mentions them. Had Thibaut been sus- 

 pected of being the murderer of the king, the charge would probably 

 have been urged against him by one or other of the rival factions, 

 with whom he played fast and loose immediately after. There is not 

 a passage in his poems that can be interpreted into a declaration of 

 attachment to Blanche, who was moreover thirteen years his senior. 

 But it is easy to see how the rumour mentioned by Matthew of Paris 

 arose. A rhymed chronicle, apparently of the age of Thibaut, repre- 

 sents him .as going about (1230) in disguise to learn how men spoke of 

 him, and discovering he had no friends. About this time there were 

 violent disputes between the University of Paris and the papal legate, 

 'and. the queen supporting the legate, the wild students made and 

 sang ribald songs attributing this report to a guilty passion for his 

 person.. In times of civil dissension it is generally found that parties 

 otherwise totally unconnected catch up and spread each other's scan- 

 dalous reports when it suits their purpose. The queen, the legate, 

 and the Count of Champagne were all unpopular; the dissolute 

 students had circulated imputations against the chastity of the two 

 former; and the interference of the king to prevent the marriage of 

 the last-mentioned with the daughter of the Duke of Bretagne would, 

 under such circumstances, be easily interpreted into a plot of the 

 queen-mother to keep him for herself. It was amongst the students 

 that the first story was invented, and that is the quarter whence 

 Matthew of Paris most probably obtained much of his information 

 regarding French affairs. 



In 1232 Thibaut married a daughter of Archambaud VIII. of 

 Bourbon. In April 1234, he succeeded to the throne of Navarre, on 

 the death of Sancho the Strong. In 1235 he quarrelled with Saint 

 Louis about the territories he had ceded to the king at the time of the 

 arrangement with the queen of Cyprus, representing them as merely 

 transferred to the king in security for the money he advanced, while the 

 latter asserted that they had been sold to him for that sum. It came 

 to blows, and Thibaut was beaten. In 1239 Thibaut took the cross and 

 set out at the head of an expedition to the Holy Land. He displayed 

 none of the talents of a general. Unable to procure ships to transport 

 his forces to the scene of action, he marched through Hungary and 

 Thrace. Arrived in the neighbourhood of Byzantium, his treasure 

 was so completely expended, that bis followers had to support them- 

 selves by plunder. In an engagement near Csesarea the division of the 

 army under his immediate command was beaten, although the other 

 was victorious. He got involved in the defiles of Taurus, and lost two- 

 thirds u of his men. Lastly, at the final defeat at Ascalon, he fled 

 ingloriously before the battle was ended, leaving his followers to their 

 fate. He returned to Pampeluna, which he had made his capital, in 

 1242, and died in 1253, having done nothing worthy of notice in the 

 interim, leaving a widow and six children. 



The poems attributed to Thibaut are in number sixty-six, and there 

 appears no reason for questioning the authenticity of any of them. 

 Thirty-eight are devoted to the expression of passionate complaints 

 and ecstasies ; three recount his amorous adventures with peasant- 

 girls ; twelve are what may be called rhymed law-cases in matters of 

 love ; the rest are exhortations to engage in the Crusade, or invectives 

 against the immorality of the age. The passion of the amorous 

 poems is not very intense : there scarcely needed the few lines 

 appended to most of them, addressed to some brother-troubadour, to 

 show that they are mere displays of the author's cleverness. The 

 cases for the Court of Love are ingenious and insignificant, like all 

 other compositions of that kind. The fifty-fourth song, an exhortation 

 to join the Crusade, is spirited. The sixty-fifth, in which the God of 

 Christians is compared to the pelican feeding its young with its blood, 

 is characterised by a blended tone of toleration and enthusiasm. In 

 the sixty-sixth he starts a theory that the Jaw of God is ripe and 

 BIOG. DIV. VOL. V. 



wholesome fruit, and that Adam sinned by eating unripe fruit 

 Thibaut's versification is correct and sweet. There is a spirit of 

 generosity about his poems that is creditable to himself : the neatness 

 and finish of bis verses are more attributable to the degree of per- 

 fection to which the art had been previously carried by others than' to 

 the author's own talents. Altogether his literary productions leave a 

 more favourable impression of his character than the part he played 

 as a warrior and politician. 



(Lea Pocnica du Roy de Navarre, par Levesquo de la Ravaliere, 

 12mo, Pari?, 1742 ; Ilittoire de 8. Loys, IX. du nom, Roy de Prance, 

 par Messire Jean, Sire de Joinville; par M. Claude Menard, 4to, a 

 Paris, 1617; De Bello Sacro Continuance Uittorice Libri VI., Basilic 

 Johanne Herede authore, Basiliao, fol. 1560 ; Baylo ; Moreri ; and 

 Biographic Univertelle, in voce ' Thibaut.') 



THIBAUT, ANTON JUSTUS FBIEDRICH, a celebrated German 

 jurist, was born on the 4th of January 1772, at Hameln in Hanover. 

 In 1792 he went to Gottingen to study the law ; be continued his 

 studies at Konigsberg ; and he finished them at Kiel, where be became 

 acquainted with Niebuhr. In this university he took the degree of 

 D.C.L, and in 1796 was admitted as a junior teacher of the law. He 

 soon rose to eminence, and at the age of twenty-seven was appointed 

 ordinary professor of civil law. In 1802 he went in the same capacity 

 to Jena, where he published bis 'System des Pandekteu- Rechts,' the 

 first systematical attempt of the kind that was written hi the German 

 language, the former works on that subject having been written hi 

 Latin. The merits of this excellent work were generally acknow- 

 ledged, and Thibaut was chosen by the Emperor Alexander one of 

 the foreign members of the commission of legislation for Russia, and 

 in 1805 he was iavited to the university of Heidelberg, where he 

 remained till his death. Though scarcely past thirty, he was con- 

 sidered to be the first civilian in Germany after Hugo, Savigny 

 having not yet attained his great reputation. Twice Thibaut was 

 chosen prorector of the university of Heidelberg, and nine times he 

 filled the office of dean of the faculty. He was also chosen deputy of 

 the university in the first chamber of the States of Baden, but as his 

 new duties interfered with those of a teacher, he resigned the office. 

 In 1826 he was made a privy councillor. His fame and popularity 

 among the students led to his receiving invitations from other univer- 

 sities, as for instance from Leipzig, where the place of professor 

 primarius of law was offered to him with a very large income, besides 

 a prebend in the chapter of Merseburg ; but nothing could induce him 

 to leave Heidelberg. In 1830 he was knighted by the Grand-Duke of 

 Baden, his former pupil, who in 1834 appointed him judge for the 

 grand-duchy, in the newly established tribunal of arbiters for the 

 domestic affairs of Germany. In 1837 he was chosen Membre correspon- 

 dantdel'Acade'mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, for the section 

 of legislation and jurisprudence. Thibaut died on the 28th of March 

 1840, with the well-deserved reputation of being equal to Savigny as a 

 civilian, and superior to him as a teacher and a practical jurist. The 

 great object of Thibaut was to distinguish clearly between the obsolete 

 portions of the Roman law, and those which were of real practical 

 use. In his private life Thibaut was most amiable ; to many a poor 

 student he proved a kind father; to many who had talent a wise 

 friend. His house was open to all his pupils, whether introduced to 

 him by others or by themselves ; but he showed particular attention 

 to those who, besides their legal knowledge, showed proficiency in 

 music, of which he was a profound judge. His little work on Purity 

 of Music quoted below is a specimen of his refined taste hi this 

 respect. 



The principal work of Thibaut is his 'System des Pandekten- 

 Rechts,' mentioned above, of which the eighth edition was published 

 at Heidelberg in 2 vols. 8vo, 1834 ; and a ninth edition was edited 

 after the author's death, by Professor Buchholtz, Jena, 1846. This 

 work is in the hands of nine out of ten lawyers in Germany, but 

 though of the highest value, it is rather a difficult book to beginners. 

 The following are the other works of Thibaut according to the date 

 of their publication : 1, ' De genuina Juris Personarum et Rerum 

 Indole veroque hujus divisionis Pretio/ 8vo, Kiel, 1796, is a disserta- 

 tio inauguralis which brought the young author the honour of being 

 attacked by Hugo. 2, ' Juristische Encyklopadie und Methodologie,' 

 8vo, Altona, 1797. 3, 'Versuche iiber einzelne Theile der Theorie 

 des Rechts ' (Essays on several Branches of the Theory of the Law), 

 2 vols. 8vo, Jena, 1798-1802; 2nd edit., 1817, translated into French 

 by De Sandt et De Chassat, Paris, 1811. 4, ' Ueber Besitz und Verjah- 

 rung ' (On Possession and Prescription), 8vo, Jena, 1802, & work 

 which caused a great sensation, but was afterwards thrown into the 

 shade by Savigny's work on Possession. 5, ' Civilistische Abhand- 



Allgemeinen burgerlichen Rechtes in Deutschland,' (On the Necessity 

 of a Common Code of Laws for Germany), 8vo, Heidelberg, 1 

 This work placed its author at the head of a great legislative move- 

 ment, and a short explanation is necessary in order that the reader 

 may understand it. Ancient German laws and a large portion of the 

 Roman law exist there together, the former referring principally to 

 landed property, entailed estates, and others called 'noble estates,' 

 the different hereditary and temporal tenements of the peasantry, the 



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