Nicolas I Boucherat, born in 1515 in the small town of Pont-sur-Seine in today's Département of Aube (called Pont-le-Roi until the French Revolution), came from an established family in Champagne that had already produced several high-ranking military officers, civil servants, and clergymen.
His uncle, Nicolas Boucherat, was a doctor of theology and abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Notre-Dame de Reclus in the diocese of Troyes; his brother Edmond became Advocate General at the Parlement of Paris in 1557.
In the spring of 1561 or 1569, Boucherat visited the Cistercian abbeys in the Papal States and the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily.
[3] On January 11, 1578, he received a patent from King Henry III, which guaranteed the abbot and all his successors the position of being doyen of the Parliament of Burgundy.
In 1576, the Grangie Toutenant, one of the oldest granges in Cîteaux, and other properties had to be sold to pay off debts.