Augustin Thierry

Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry (May 10th 1795, Blois - May 22nd 1856, Paris) is a Historien French.

It is particularly recognized to have been one of the first historians to work on the original sources to build its work. He dissociates also other historians of his time by his very alive narration.

Biography

Born with Blois, older brother of Amédée Simon Dominique Thierry, it does not have the advantage of the birth or fortune, but it quickly appears extremely gifted. It collects many prices and is distinguished with the college from Blois, which enables him to enter to the National university in October 1811. In two years, it takes down the arts baccalaureat, the science baccalaureat and the license of letters. It leaves the ENS in 1813, sent as professor to Compiegne to teach humanities there. It there remains little of time and quickly returns to Paris.

Its burning and generous nature led it to embrace the ideas of the French revolution with enthusiasm. It then approaches the ideal vision of the company of Saint-Simon which requires his assistance of him, then of which he becomes the secretary between 1814 and 1817 and, as he said it itself, his wire adoptive . But, while the majority of the disciples of Saint-Simon dealt with the businesses of the life, of the theoretical and practical problems, Thierry decided to pay his attention on the history.

Its vocation of historian was strongly influenced by the reading of the Martyrs of Chateaubriand. Its romantic heat was nourished later in the writings of Walter Scott, and even if he did not write accounts of fiction, its design of the history integrated its literary and dramatic aspect.

In 1817, Augustin Thierry enters to the newspaper the Critic (who becomes then the Censeur European ) and launches out in the liberal combat by providing an article per week as of 1819, its writings trying to find in the history the arguments necessary to the refutation of the contemporary policy. Its guiding idea on the cruel Invasions, the conquest Norman, the formation of the communes, the progressive rise of the nations towards the free government and the parliamentary institutions is observed already in these articles. Once the Critic European disappeared in 1820, it is in its Lettres on the French history published in the French Courrier in 1820 qu ' it exposes the principles of the “historical reform” which it wishes to register in his century, but the virulent criticisms raised by its writings make it leave the French Courrier in January 1821.

Thanks to Fauriel, he learned how to use the original sources and seeks to make the history in order to include/understand it and either for his subjective aspects. Thanks to the assistance of Latin chronicles and collection of the Anglo-Saxon laws until very badly included/understood there, it made appear in 1825 its Histoire of the conquest of England by Norman the whose publication raised enthusiasm.

Written in an at the same time precise and romantic style, it is dominated by the false idea whereby Anglo-Saxon freedom resisted the invasion Norman survived in spite of the defeat through parliamentary monarchy. Its talent of writer returns the approximations and the less visible lacks of its work. This work, published at the conclusion of many years of baited work, involved for Augustin Thierry of serious problems of sight. In 1826, it is in the obligation to engage of the secretaries to assist it, and a few years later, he is quasi-blind man. However, it continues its work.

In 1827 it again publishes its Lettres on the French history , with fifteen new additions in which it describes the episodes more striking appearance of the medieval communes. The chronicles of as some communal charters have founi to him the bases of a solid building. For this reason its work on the communes is not as dated as its conquest Norman , but it was too sharp to generalize the facts provided by some memorable but localized cases. This supported the transmission with the public, and even to certain historians of profession of the false ideas on one of the most complex problems of the French social origins.

In 1828, its health condition becomes alarming: it is reached of a dorsal tabès which paralyzes it. Immobilized and blind man, it is accommodated by the family of Espine. This period enables him to bind an epistolary friendship with Chateaubriand.

Thierry was a burning partisan of the Révolution of July which carried his/her friends to the capacity. Guizot grants a pension to him and names his/her brother Amédée prefect of Haute-Saône. This last invites it to spend some time at his place to rest: it arrives at Vesoul the April 22nd 1831. It spends four years in the area, meeting Julie de Querengal which it marries the November 7th same year and which becomes its nearer collaborator.

In 1834, it republishes under the name Ten years of historical studies its first tests published in the European Censeur and the French Courrier . It also publishes its Récits of times mérovingiens (the first of them leaves in 1833) in which it reproduces in an alive and dramatic form some of the most famous accounts of Gregoire de Tours. These Récits is first of all appeared in the Revue of the two worlds , then gathered in volumes preceded by the very relevant introduction Considérations on the French history where it expresses its political philosophy. These accounts were illustrated by the painter Jean-Paul Laurens.

Already member of the Academy of the inscriptions and the humanities since the May 7th 1830, this publication is worth to him to receive in 1841 the Prix Gobert with life, on behalf of the French Academy. The duke of Orleans offers to him even the direction of his library in 1835. Its Guizot guard entrusts to him the direction of great publications of historical documents from which it draws a Essai on the Third state in 1850. It was also charged to publish the new Documents , a selection of acts marking out the history of the Tiers state. With a whole network of dedicated collaborators such as Charles Bourquelot, Charles Louandre, Ernest Renan, it compiles these documents in the Recueil of the new monuments of the history of the Third state (1850 - 1870), which relates however only to the septentrional part of France. Its foreword with this work was then published separately under the name Histoire of the Third state .

One owes in Augustin Thierry the first critical study of the communal institutions, and few things can explain the relative lapse of memory of which it was the object after his death. The end of its life was obscured by personal problems and preoccupations with a health. It loses his wife Julie de Querengal the June 9th 1844, an intelligent woman who had been for him a collaborator as able as devoted. The Révolution of 1848 inflicted a last blow to him by ruining its interpretation of the national history based on the harmony and while cutting to him a good part of the revenues allotted by Guizot. It does not dissimulate its distress by noting the inversion of the mode of the liberal Bourgeoisie which it had posed in inescapable epilog with the French history.

It then started to be detached from the rationalist opinions and to approach the Church. When the catholic authors reproached him its historical errors, he promised to correct them, and one does not find any more in his last edition of the Histoire of the conquest his severe judgments on the policy of Rome. Without giving up his liberal friends, he sought the company of lit priests, and, right before its death, it seemed laid out to join the Church.

Augustin Thierry died in Paris at the 61 years age, after having known a difficult end-of-life.

works

Quotation

Augustin Thierry said to his disciples: “The great precept which it is necessary to give to the historians, it is to distinguish instead of confusing; because, unless being varied, one is not true” ( Second letter on the French history ).

See too

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, count of Saint-Simon

External bonds

Note on Wikibéral.

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