Marie-Paul-Hyacinthe Meyer (January 17, 1840 - September 7, 1917), was a French philologist.

He was born in Paris and educated at the Ecole des Chartes. In 1863 he joined the manuscript department of the Bibliothèque Nationale. In 1876 he became professor of the languages and literatures of southern Europe at the Collège de France. In 1882 he was made director of the Ecole des Chartes, and a year later was nominated a member of the Academy of Inscriptions. He was one of the founders of the Revue critique, and a founder and the chief contributor to Romania (1872).

Paul Meyer began with the study of old Provençal literature, but subsequently did valuable work in many different departments of romance literature, and ranked as the chief authority on the French language of his era.

Works

• Rapports sur les documents manuscrits de l'ancienne littérature de la France conserves dans les bibliothèques de la Grande Bretagne (1871)
• Recueil d'anciens textes bas-latins, provencaux et français (2 parts, 1874-1876)
• Alexandre le Grand dans la littérature française du moyen âge (2 vols., 1886).
• L’Apocalypse en français au XIIIe siècle (Paris MS fr. 403) (1900-1, with Leopold Delisle)

He edited a great number of old French texts for the Societe des anciens textes français, the Societe de l'histoire de France and independently. Among these may be mentioned:

• Aye d'Avignon (1861), with Guessard
• Flamenca (1865)
• the Histoire of Guillaume le Maréchal (3 vols., 1892-1902)
• Raoul de Cambrai (1882), with A Longnon
• Fragments d'une vie de Saint Thomas de Canterbury (1885)
• Guillaume de la Barre (1894).