Pierre Dupuy (1582-1651) was keeper of the French king's library, a post which allowed him to become acquainted with and copy an enormous mass of unpublished documents. These furnished him with the material for some excellent works, probably including this one. However, this book also bears some relationship to a smaller work by Pierre Pithou (1539-1596), sometimes published under the same title. Whoever compiled it, it remains an important contribution to the history of the relations of church and state in the Middle Ages. The text is written from the Gallican standpoint, i.e. in favour of the rights of the crown in temporal and political matters, which explains the delay in their publication until after Dupuy's death.