Chief librarian of the Paris Law Faculty, archivist, legal historian at the École des Chartes and the author of many textbooks, Paul Viollet (1840–1914) was a tireless worker, whose activities supported the many commitments of a liberal Catholic. Professor at the École des Chartres, Paul Viollet associated teaching with educational writing, and because of his textbooks, professors at the Paris Law Faculty considered him one of their own, and not merely a guardian of book collections! A course in the general history of public and private French law was established in French law schools by a decree of December 28, 1880; alongside Adhémar Esmein, Paul Viollet was an agent in the development of French legal history, both with his scholarly research and with his textbooks.There is an ideological aspect of Paul Viollet’s textbooks that makes them interesting testimonies of the times in which they were written; most of all, it also highlights the many personal commitments of their author, the commitments of an involved Christian jurist/citizen.