Pierre-Robert Le Cornier de Cideville

Who was Pierre-Robert Le Cornier de Cideville?

Pierre Robert Le Cornier de Cideville, was a French magistrate and scholar, co-founder of the Academy of Rouen.

Cideville, who was born at Rouen, the descendant by his mother, of the poet Chapelle, Boileau and Molière's merry companion.

He succeeded his father in his position of councilor to the Parliament of Normandy. In addition to his assiduous study of law, he managed to dabble in music, painting and poetry, having, at age eighteen, won a prize at the Palinods Academy of Rouen.

Cideville was Voltaire's classmate at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and the latter professed, fifty years later, that they still were friends. In fact, Voltaire held Cideville's literary judgment in such high esteem that he did not hesitate to submit his writings to his review. Voltaire even came to seek refuge at his home in 1730 when legal action had been taken against him for some of his works. He allegedly wrote Éryphile et La Mort de César during his stay in Normandy.

The correspondence of this major figure of the Enlightenment in the provinces with Voltaire is a treasure trove for scholars of that era. Cideville possessed an epigrammatic talent which is evidenced in one of his letters where his recounts his pen-friend how Voltaire had to leave very hastily Déville on the day a farmer he had cured from a fever, mistook him for a sorcerer.