Despite the fact that Pierre de Belleperche was a cleric – and was even to be nominated bishop of Auxerre – his religious convictions seem to have had little influence on his legal thinking. For one thing, he was convinced that it is necessary to limit both the competence of ecclesiastical courts and the validity of canon law in order to secure Roman law and secular courts to their specific areas. Indeed, he was closer to the secular power than to the church institutions, corroborating the imperial nature of the French royal power. A man of great diplomatic skills, he was eventually to become officer at the court and to hold various important positions. Before his administrative and political career, he was professor of civil law at the University of Orléans. There, with Jacques de Revigny, he shaped the renewal of Roman law teaching. His approach was systematic, insisting on the internal coherence of the Code or the Digest. His work is mainly known to us through the writings of one of his occasional students, Cynus from Pistoia.