Definition
Pierre Defontaines (also rendered Desfontaines) was a thirteenth-century French jurist and the oldest known writer on the customary law of France. Around 1253, he published a treatise on French customary law — *Conseil à un ami* — which systematically compared the prevailing customs of northern France with Roman law. He is significant in legal history as the first identifiable author to reduce French customary law to writing in a sustained analytical form, predating Philippe de Beaumanoir's more comprehensive *Coutumes de Beauvaisis* by several decades.
The name appears in legal sources both as "Defontaines" and "Desfontaines." Both spellings refer to the same jurist and the same work.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter Defontaines almost exclusively in historical and comparative legal contexts — principally in works on the development of continental private law, the reception of Roman law in medieval France, and the origins of codified customary law. The reference in Burrill traces through Montesquieu's *Esprit des Lois* and Mackeldey's *Handbook of the Roman Law*, which signals how Defontaines entered the Anglo-American legal consciousness: not directly, but filtered through Enlightenment-era comparative jurists and nineteenth-century civil law treatise writers.
A researcher should note two navigational points. First, primary source access to Defontaines in English-language legal libraries is essentially nonexistent; the references in sources like Burrill and Mackeldey are secondary and abbreviated. The actual *Conseil à un ami* is a French-language manuscript tradition, and authoritative modern editions are found in French legal history scholarship rather than in common law library collections. Second, the Burrill entry appears to have been cut short (the fragment ends mid-sentence), which is a known hazard in digitized versions of nineteenth-century legal dictionaries — the entry likely continued with further bibliographic or contextual information that may be recoverable in complete print editions.
For corpus researchers tracing the intellectual genealogy of civil law concepts in American legal literature, Defontaines functions as a waypoint, not a destination. His significance in sources like Mackeldey and Burrill is as an anchor date — circa 1253 — marking the beginning of systematic French legal literature. When a nineteenth-century American treatise writer invokes Defontaines, the rhetorical purpose is typically to establish the antiquity and independent authority of French customary law against the claim that all European private law derives wholesale from Roman sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is sparse and derivative. It draws directly on two secondary sources: Montesquieu's *De l'Esprit des Lois*, Book 28, Chapter 38, and Mackeldey's *Handbook of the Roman Law* (translated into English, §85). Both of those works treat Defontaines in the same limited way — as a historical marker for the commencement of French legal writing — rather than as a substantive jurisprudential authority.
No other major English-language historical legal dictionary in the standard shelf (Black's early editions, Bouvier, Tomlins, Jacob) carries a dedicated entry for Defontaines, which reflects the term's status as a proper name of limited utility to common law practitioners. His appearance in Burrill is consistent with that dictionary's broader ambition to serve comparative and civil law research alongside common law practice — a feature that distinguishes Burrill from its contemporaries.
The entry's incompleteness in Burrill (the surviving text ends with "This") is notable and should be flagged when this source is cited. Researchers relying on a digitized or excerpted version of Burrill should consult a complete print edition to recover the full entry.
Jurisdictional Note
Defontaines wrote within the customary law tradition of northern France and has no direct relevance to English common law jurisdictions. His significance is confined to French legal history, comparative private law, and the civil law tradition as received in Louisiana and Quebec. Researchers in those latter jurisdictions may find him referenced in treatises tracing the deep roots of French-derived civil codes.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — French Customary Law; History of Continental Legal Literature; Reception of Roman Law in Medieval Europe