Entre amadorismo e profissionalismo: as tensões da prática histórica no século XIX

Manoel Luiz Salgado Guimarães

Translated by Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette
Translation from TOPOI - Revista de História, Rio de Janeiro, n.5, p.184-200, 2002.

The present article focuses on two different ways of writing history in 19th century France. One of these models is of particular importance in understanding 19^th century Brazilian historiography. Research for this project was made possible by a CAPES fellowship, granted between 1999-2000, which enabled my work in the French archives.

RESUMO

O presente artigo discute dois diferentes projetos de constituição da escrita histórica no século XIX a partir especialmente da experiência francesa, importante modelo referencial para a constituição da disciplina no espaço acadêmico brasileiro. Ele apresenta resultados parciais de uma pesquisa realizada com acervos documentais franceses a partir da bolsa de pós-doutoramento concedida pela Capes no período 1999-2000.

L'Institut n'est pas um théatre où l'on brille, mais un atelier où l'on travaille
laborieusement a huis clos.
Dr. Cerise¹

Far from being a natural object, the past consists of a constantly shifting dispute which mobilizes political interests and knowledge in a complex network where knowledge may well signify power, but where it is also power's role to construct knowledge regarding bygone days. Enthroned in a pantheon, History as a discipline remakes its own trajectory, presenting this as a natural development of knowledge and seeking to make itself more scientific while erasing all traces of how this process actually came about in an attempt to create disciplinary memory. If historiographic practice requires that we question the procedures involved in the construction of memory, then why not submit the discipline itself to this same procedure, in order to better comprehend it as a process of temporal production in human societies?

The affirmation of a member of the Historical Institute of Paris, made before that organization's general assembly on the 27^th of November, with which we began this article expresses quite clearly the tension which the Institute was passing through at the time. The Institute was created in July 1830, together with the new French monarchy, in a move which gave greater value to the study and research of history. In the words of Luis Felipe Furet, the member of the Orleans Dynasty who came to power in July 1830 and who was the first monarch of a "dynasty without a past",³ the legitimacy of his power needed to be founded not in the atemporal claims of a dynastic house, nor in the rights of the aristocracy, but in a constitution which clearly indicated the bases and limits of this power. The past was a constant concern for this new regime, which sought to root the legitimacy of a recent creation – the French nation created by the Revolution of 1789 – in the mists of the remote past. The King was now the King of the French and it was absolutely necessary that these self-same Frenchmen knew of their history. The teaching of this history was the responsibility of state-sponsored academics, but the utilization of the past was also a political task of the first magnitude. Alongside the creation of institutions which were geared to organizing knowledge about the past, historian and minister Guizot, who assumed the post of head of Public Instruction, implemented a reform of the French school system. This was proposed in 1833, the year in which two public education institutions were created in the French capital. Guizot's reforms sought greater secular control over education without denigrating the presence and contributions of the Catholic Church (even though Guizot himself was a Protestant). The minister's efforts with regards to organizing the past were also expressed in his preoccupation with other institutions of memory, which were similarly reorganized according to the new political interest in the past.⁴ The debates regarding which forms of knowledge were considered indispensable to the practice of history give us a measure of how older forms of competency regarding the use of manuscripts from the past were re-signified according to the new exigencies involved in the writing of a national history. In this context, we find the same Minister Guizot supporting the publication of Natalis de Wailly's Elements of Paleography as a means of diffusing those forms of knowledge which were considered to be indispensable in the reading of unedited, old manuscripts dealing with the history of France, above all those relative to the Middle Ages.⁵ At the History Congress organized by the Historical Institute of Paris in 1838, Auguste Savagner, an ex-student of the Chartres School who had retired a few months before the Revolution of 1830, presented an extensive work dealing with the meaning and importance of diplomacy and its progress from the initial efforts of the Benedictine monks, who Savagner considered to be the precursors of the art. Salienting their differences with Guizot's project, with whom they were battling for legitimacy in speaking about the national past, the members of the Institute reaffirmed during their Congress the importance of the theme both for the contemporary relevancy of historical studies and for their political significance. Savagner's main argument emphasized the importance of this knowledge in the context of the new demands being placed upon the research and understanding of the past. The author felt that his contribution was fundamental in the sense that it aided the historian in his task of "judging in a balanced way public or private acts",⁶ a clear affirmation of the historian's moral role. With his indisputable competence in the exercise of historical critique, the diplomat could contribute to the establishment of clear and unequivocal truth regarding the past. The result of a definitive affirmation of the written document as the basis for the writing of history, Savanger's work emphasizes that documental research may in fact fill in the silences surrounding certain monuments of the past. According to another participant of the Congress, Dufey de l'Yvonne, an institution dedicated to the study of diplomacy was especially necessary at a time when the past seemed to be an object of intense political dispute and thus the subject of all sorts of falsifications: "In this century of egoism and speculation, industrialists – more greedy than illuminated – speculate, with the admiration and interest of their contemporaries, regarding the things of the Middle Ages".⁷ It was up to History to vigorously establish the truth about the facts of this medieval past: politics and the use of the past are here combined in the re-elaboration of meaning regarding a form of knowledge and its associated practices.

The tension which our opening quote reveals was not only present within the ranks of the Historical Institute of Paris, but also in the competitions which this organization engaged in with like associations. As part of the movement by which history was transformed into a powerful political weapon, in the same year in which the Institute was created (1833), Guizot, occupying the position of Minister of Public Instruction and a respected historian in his own right, headed a committee of founders of another cultural association which concerned itself with history: the Société de l'Histoire de France. Several other historians were also members of this founding group along with Guizot, including Barante and Thiers. According to its original project, the Society took as its first goal the publication of the Original Documents of French History. The declaration which registers the Society's birth and which affirms its goal of editing and publishing documents relevant to the history of France, made a point of registering the innovative nature of its work of collecting, organizing, criticizing and publishing these documental sources. Different from the work of the erudite scholars, from whom the Society members had distinguished themselves since the beginning of their organization (even while they recognized the importance of these older historians' two centuries of research), the Society member's labors were systematically organized and directed towards a larger public and were thus of greater use to those who engaged in historical criticism. The erudition of the Benedictine monks of Saint Maur was a counterpoint to the work of the these history professionals, who envisioned a much larger public which demanded new and different tasks from the discipline according to the needs of a distinct social and political world whose watershed was certainly the experiences of 1789. The older collections of documents, which were organized according to the needs of antiquarianism and the cultural criteria of the older erudite scholars, needed now to be reorganized following clear criteria which were defined by principles formulated by a generation involved in the symbolic and political construction of the French nation. The central reference point of this project continued to be the 1789 Revolution, but now this event needed to be integrated with the pre-revolutionary past in such a way that the Revolution could definitively be transformed into History and thus set beyond contemporary political disputes.

In truth, the criticisms leveled against the erudite antiquarians and their work, now representative of a historical practice that was openly discredited, was no invention of 19^th century historians. It – like critiques of the supposedly meaningless way in which these scholars treated History – was the result of the work of the historical philosophers of the 18^th century and their systematic critique of the peculiar rules and procedures utilized by the erudite scholars.⁸ The entry in the Encyclopedia which was dedicated to the theme clearly indicated the borders of erudition within the set of modern forms of knowledge and this, in turn, imposed a new meaning which linked erudition to disinterested knowledge, disassociated from any given end or utility. This was the fundamental criterion to which human activities were to be subordinated in the modernity then under construction. "Utility is the great idol of the times," said Schiller in his second letter regarding the esthetic education of man. "It wants to be served by all efforts and cultivated by all talents. In this gross balance, the spiritual weight of art is naught, and art itself, plundered of all stimuli, disappears from this century's noisy marketplace. The spirit of investigation itself slowly destroys the provinces of imagination, one by one, and the frontiers of art narrow to the degree that science widens its own."⁹

Understood through this lens, History also reveals an intrinsic and unique – and for this reason objective – meaning as a pragmatic tool for the present and not simply an end in and of itself. The same entry of the Encyclopedia which condemned erudition for its lack of immediate utility also saw it as a prisoner of memory and imagination, less noble faculties for understanding the past than the reason of the philosophers. To win History over to reason, banishing the imagination, was to include it within a modern project of writing the past according to the exigencies of the present.

The love for works which demonstrate the "bel esprit" and the study of the exact sciences has replaced among us our ancestors' love of erudition. What are the reasons for this? It seems to me that the general themes of erudition have almost dried up due to the great number of lettered men who have occupied themselves with this material; there's not much left to do in this field and those investigative objects which remain are of little importance and are thus inappropriate for piquing one's curiosity. The discoveries made in the field of physics and mathematics demand more exercise of the spirit, but the field is also more attractive, more vast and for this reason stimulates more one's self-esteem due to the difficulties which it presents.¹⁰

By distancing themselves from this tradition, pointing out its limitations but also formulating their own manner of incorporating it through the "sciences which are of aid to history", the historians of the romantic generation sought to generate new statutes, rules and procedures for their calling and the general vector of these changes indicate that the underlying meaning for their activities was provided by the new national collectivities then in formation. The pronounced presence of the State in the formulation, organization and administration of History according to these new demands is quite clearly evident. Guizot's project, which he presented to the King, calling for state financing for research into sources which were important for the writing of the history of France, appeared in the first Bulletin published by the Society. This same issue was entitled Revue de l'Histoire et des Antiquités Nationales, thus recovering a new formulation for the old term "antiquities". From now on, "antiquities" would not just refer to the material remains of the ancient classical cultures: it would also be used to classify remains of the national past. These gained legitimacy through the use of the term and were thus classified as being legitimate objects for historical research: the re-elaboration of tradition according to new demands. The new meaning conferred upon history by these maneuvers can be espied in the pages of the works of Augustin Thierry, one of the many historians of the generation active during the first decades of the 19^th century. Thierry was also a collaborator of Guizot and he showed his clear understanding of the new tasks of the historian:

]]> National history is for the men of a country a sort of common property; it is a portion of the moral patrimony which each generation, upon disappearing, hands off to their substitutes; no one should transmit it in the same way in which they have received it – all should add something to this patrimony in terms of clarity and certainty… Where have we come from and where are we going to? These two great interrogations – the political past and future – are what concern us now.¹¹

The political meaning conferred upon History by this generation of historian-politicians is more than obvious: aside from the past, what was in play was the production of meaning for the future of the national community, which tried to read from the past its possible future destiny, guaranteeing, in turn, the social cohesion of the present.

We must now return, however, to the Historical Institute of Paris and the debate which generated Dr. Cerise's affirmation, formulated at the moment in which the society discussed opening association to a wider external public. In reality, this discussion reflected an institutional crisis which had been dragging on for some years and which had even caused repercussions in the Institute's finances. Already in its first year of existence, the Institute operated with a budget deficit which, according to its directors, could only be resolved through the inscription of at least 400 new associate members. Other suggestions for dealing with this financial crisis were presented and discussed, including having wealthy members contribute more cash to ease the Institution's problems. This debate was undertaken in such a way as to not give the public the impression that the Institute was bankrupt, which could have reduced the numbers of incoming new associates. In order to deal with the situation, the associate members agreed to name M. Meuzi as the administrator for the Institute and organized a plan to give greater visibility to the association and its works. As part of these efforts, it was suggested that the Institution carry out at least one monthly meeting which would be opened to the public at large. This provoked manifestations such as that by Dr. Cerise, quoted above, and also led to the modification of the title of the Institute's journal, a project which was presented at the next meeting, on the 28^th of December, 1840. Discussion of this change was to occupy successive meetings until finally the assembly voted to rename the journal as L'Invetigateur on the 26^th of February, 1841. In the words of the administrator, "it is urgent that we give [the journal] some publicity; make it useful. It has had no readers up until now other than the members of the Institute itself and a handful of subscribers. It would be a crime to abandon it in this circle".¹²

Both suggestions pointed in the same direction, towards making the activities of the Historical Institute of Paris more public, opening up the association beyond the small circle of erudite scholars of which it was currently composed and thus altering, in this fashion, the institutional profile of the historical studies carried out by the organization. What was being projected in this sense was the transformation of the Institute and its journal into something more "useful", ensuring them a pragmatism more in line with the exigencies of the new times.

The Society, supported by Guizot and state interests, seems to have supposed from the beginning that its work would have a public and visible dimension and that it would in turn be supported from the public coffers. This was not the case, however, with the institution created by Eugene Garay de Monglave in 1833. The tensions between the increased demands for professionalism in History and its traditional roll as a field for the activities of amateurs and dilettantes were quite apparent within Monglave's Historical Institute, in which those who wished greater professionalism confronted the financial challenges involved in supporting such an institution as well as the resistance of those who wished it to remain a loosely organized guild of peers devoted to historical enquiry. The Institute thus met multiple internal and external challenges in order to affirm itself in the new age of History.

From the point of view of the Institute's view of history, expressed on its foundation, we can see a perspective that is quite different from that which marked foundation of the Historical Society of France. While the organization clearly wished to support investigations into French history, the Historical Institute was linked in its concerns to the universalistic historical philosophies of the 18^th century. By connecting the creation of the Historical Institute of Paris to an already existing tradition of French learned societies and associations, the Act of the first general assembly of the Institute, realized on the 23^rd of March, 1834, sought to reaffirm that this affiliation did not mean that the Institute had abandoned the establishment of new goals, most particularly in response to its less-than-satisfactory evaluation of the historical studies which had been carried out by other "learned" academic societies. On the other hand, history was still presented in universalistic terms in this Act as something which was capable of revealing the march of humanity's progress:

The actual state of the study of history is not marked by a lack of universalistic sentiment, without which it cannot be special, but can it never be that which it should be, a general study of the phenomena which work to form and direct the march of great human agglomerations? We must agree that this universalistic character is something of an expectation and that it is apparently slumbering."¹³

Orientated by this diagnosis, which pointed to the need for an eminently universalistic History, the first project organizing the sessions of the Historical Institute of Paris contemplated a significantly diverse selection of themes and interests which would theoretically be taken into consideration by the sages meeting at Rue Saint-Pères, 14. These ranged from a history of the revolutions of the Earth, to a natural history of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. They also included a history of the races of the world, a history of the uses and customs of peoples (perhaps a lingering heritage of Voltaire's Histoire des mouers), political and institutional histories and finally, in the Institute's 12^th session, a general history of France. A large canvas on which to paint the history of civilization itself seemed to be the driving motivation behind the energies of the intellectuals and learned men who made up the Historical Institute of Paris. Their universalistic project also presumed that the Institute would participate in an international network of like-minded societies in order to make viable the writing of a truly universalistic history: "Having founded the Historical Institute within a general mandate of usefulness, the first condition of its existence is to have in all countries members who can support and encourage its activities".¹⁴

We can understand the Historical Institute of Paris' interest in maintaining a relationship with the IHGB as part of this project, as well as its insistence in organizing a vast network of alliances with correspondents and cultural associations spread across the world. Debate regarding the number of classes which should make up the Institute, instigated by Permanent Secretary Eugène de Monglave, took up most of the Assembly's second meeting. Several proposals were presented to the effect that all classes should be reduced to a single offering dealing with "general history", while others set the number of classes at two, three or even six. Michelet's proposal for six classes was finally voted upon and adopted and these included: general history, the history of the social and philosophical sciences, history of languages and literature, history of physics and mathematics, history of the fine arts and French history. Some of the proposals presented also offered up classes in geography and chronology, conceiving of these topics within a complementary perspective which combined specialization and temporality in the treatment of phenomena, even though the second of these two disciplines had been in decline and crisis since the 18^th century.¹⁵

A more universalistic perspective, concerned with the history of civilization in its widest sense according to the interests of the antiquarian perspective, was here combined with the exigencies and pressures of national history, organized within practices which conceived of the calling of the historian as a scientific discipline. Two distinct institutional models, two different practices and two manners of understanding written history were sharing the same space and time and the meanings of the present were produced within the context of this dispute over the past. The definition of legitimacy in terms of speaking about the past implied disputes in the present and these conflicts and tensions were expressed during different moments of these two institutions' lives. This, in turn, implied greater or lesser State recognition for the history projects each of these two institutional models carried out.

Beginning with its second year, the Historical Institute of Paris organized annual congresses whose works revolved around the questions previously presented as themes for discussion. According to the president of the Institution, M. Buchez, these congresses were responsible for "popularizing the Institute and ensuring it a long life".¹⁶ However, during the same committee meeting which was supposed to regulate the activities of upcoming Congress, divergences were clearly expressed. On the one hand, there was the position of those who supported an active role for the different classes offered by the Institution in presenting the questions which would be brought up for debate; on the other, there was the opinion of the Permanent Secretary, M. Monglave, which expressed in metaphorical language the belief that light needed to spring from the center of the organization and not its periphery. In this way, Monglave justified the role of a central council which would formulate the questions to be debated and this was the position which was eventually victorious. Of the three members chosen to make up this council, two agreed with Monglave's positions, even though in many moments during the Institute's first years of existence, the beliefs of the Permanent Secretary were held up to severe criticism, especially regarding his central roll in conducting the HIP's activities.

Overall, however, it was the public recognition of the authorities of the French capital which the Historical Institute sought. In a meeting of the Institute's Committee on the 11^th of March, 1835, it was decided to solicit from the Prefect of the Seine region use of rooms in the Hotel de Ville, the center of public administration in Paris, for the activities of the upcoming Congress. This was the first in a series of initially successful initiatives through which the Institute sought to approximate itself with the public authorities. This relationship became more complicated as the years went by, however, a state of affairs which is documented by the Institute's archives, which speak, in a round about way, of problems with the city administration of Paris and also with the Ministry of Public Instruction. Notes for the June 30^th 1836 meeting of the Institute's Council describe a visit to the Prefect for the Seine Region, M. Rambuteau, in which the Institute's representatives were informed that the Hotel de Ville – and more precisely the Saint-Jean room – would no longer be at their disposal. In 1837, the Institute's request for an audience with the Prefect was not even answered.

Another point of tension between the HIP and the public authorities, especially the Ministry of Public Instruction, were the courses planned by the Institute and which needed official authorization for their effective realization. The Institute's letter addressed to the Minister was read during the October 20^th, 1838 session of the Council. It reminded the authorities that the Institute's statutes, approved by the government, clearly stipulated the courses and that the Institute had been waiting for authorization to begin these since March of that year. The Minister's response couldn't have been more damaging to the Institute's desires for official legitimization of its activities. M. Salvandy, the Minister of Instruction, informed the Council that, following consultations with the Ministry of the Interior, he had discovered that the Historical Institute of Paris did not, in fact, legally exist being that it had not been constituted via a ordonnance royale and that because of this, its statutes could not receive official authorization. With regards to permission to conduct the courses, the Royal Council promised to take the matter under advisement and permission was finally granted to the Institute in December, 1838. The first four courses offered included one about Parisian antiquities taught by Alex Lenoir (an active member of the Institute who had played a fundamental role in formulating a historical patrimony policy shortly after the Revolution¹⁷), a class on the history of France taught by Henri Prat, one on the history of philosophy taught by Armand Fouquier and a course on the history of 19^th century French literature taught by Alphonse Fresse-Montval.

The questions presented for debate at the annual congresses were a constant source of friction within the Council meetings. In general, those presented to the first Congress dealt with questions linked to universal history and possible solutions for an explanation as to what was meant by the term "human civilization". These internal polemics indicate disputes around conceptions and projects of written history, confirming that even within the Institution's walls, no single canon had been formed regarding these questions. The themes presented for debate during the first Congress reaffirmed a conception of history deeply in debt to the works of 18^th century historical philosophers and were concerned with securing a sense of meaning and finality for historical reflection which would maintain them as central concerns. Even the first of these themes, which was to open debate in the first Congress, was only able to be chosen after fierce debate. What is history's finality? was finally chosen as the opening question after several others were presented which asked if history had any finality at all, what it had been in the past and what it needed to be defined as in the future. The first of these formulations was quickly rejected as it suggested that history may not have any ends at all, a proposition which obviously ran radically against the personal positions of most members of the Institute. In order to discuss this first question in front of the congress, three expositors would occupy themselves with defining its meaning, pointing to a more universalistic and moralistic perspective regarding History in their presentations and even seeking in some cases to ally the historical project with the heritage of Christianity.

The understandings of the Institute's members regarding the greater meaning of their annual conferences also points in this same direction. The Congress organizers sought to underline the universalistic dimensions of their studies more than the history of the French nation, which was nevertheless always represented: "We convoke all historical intelligences together under the same banner, with the following slogan clearly written upon it: for the welfare and progress of humanity! And we will plant this banner in the natural center of science, Paris!"¹⁸ The program proposed by these history lovers seems little different from the illuminist perspectives and ideals which they had inherited from their 18^th century forbearers. Likewise, Paris continued to appear in their discourses as the capital of the "republic of letters", a republic in which common intellectual objectives made men equal and which erased their political differences in the name of this equality. The task to which these gentlemen now dedicated themselves seems somewhat more pacific than those engaged in by the previous generation, which had to resort to arms to defend its ideals. This represented a sort of regeneration carried out by history:

Forty five years ago this afternoon, at this very hour, the Bastille was burning in a sign of revolution. Our manifesto, gentlemen, is one of peaceful regeneration which does not need the aid of bullets, nor need trust in canon.¹⁹

History was entrusted with the regenerative and pacific task of renewing the human social body, undertaken using methods quite different from those utilized in 1789. An effective schoolmistress in the task of educating the present via recourse to examples from the past, History could even, perhaps, heal the wounds opened by the revolutionary experience. No longer did the past have to be rejected – the motivating force of the Revolution – in order to affirm the national present. The words of the President of the Historical Institute in the opening session of the First Congress, realized in 1835, leave no doubts as to what History's task was. It was imperative to see in history a moral lesson and the importance of the facts which History narrated lay precisely in their capacity to impart this lesson and patriotic inspiration based upon examples. The metaphors continued and linked knowledge of History to the task of creating orientation for the future. The President even compared History to a compass given a secure reading for humanity's travel into the unknown.²⁰

Does the creation of the Historical Institute of Paris present us with a historiographical "ancine regime" which had somehow risen from the ashes of the 18^th century at the moment of the July Monarchy's assumption of the throne? Within the Institute, were there those who secretly dreamed of a restoration which would blot the impact of 1789 from France's collective memory or at least lessen its meaning within the context of the elaboration of a new social project? Certainly we can find in this association, with its strongly aristocratic tendencies, representatives of those who longed for a return of the good old days. However, these gentlemen knew that they could no longer write history without considering it beyond 1789. The July Monarchy was not the same monarchy that was restored in 1814 and between the two profound changes had occurred in French society which allowed the past to return. In this sense (but obviously in diverse ways) the generation of romantic historians who were engaged in conducting the business of the state shared a realization that only History could defuse the threat posed by 1789. This meant understanding that the incorporation of the Revolution as past history was a pre-condition for moving ahead into the future. To produce meaning and domesticate it via the historian's words were these gentlemen's essential tasks, both in the more "amateur" aspects of their chosen field as in its more professional facets. This dispute implied a victory for some, who at this moment began to write their history by naming their Other.

1 "The Institute is not a theater where one shines, but a workshop where we labor greatly inside our four walls." P. 641 General Assembly of the Historical Institute of Paris, realized on the 27th of November, 1840. Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal. Code MS 9187.
2 Koselleck, Reinhart. L'expérience de l' histoire. Paris: Gallimard, Seuil, 1997.
3 Furet, Franqois. La monarchie de Juillet. 1830-1848. In: ___________. La Révolution Française 1770-1880. Paris: Hachette, 1988, p. 325-379.
4 Theis, Laurent. Guizot et les institutions de mémoire. In: NORA, Pierra (Org.). Les lieux de mémoire. II La Nation. Paris: Gallimard, 1986, p. 569-592.
5 Wailly, Natalis de. Élements de paléographie. Paris: Impr. Royale, 1838.
6 Savagner, Auguste. La science de la diplomatique a-t-elle fait quelques progrès depuis les Bénédictins? Quels moyens conviendrait-il d'employer pour en développer et propager les principes? Third Session of The Historical Congress of Paris. Sept. 19th, 1838, p. 69. (Code BNF Z-46099).
7 Dufey de l' Yvonne. Third Session of The Historical Congress of Paris. Sept. 19th, 1838. (Code BNF Z-46099)
8 "A la fin du XVIII e siècle les trois querelles, la querelle du spinozisme, la querelle de la diplomatigue, la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, s'achèvent dans un chorus final qui célèbre le sacrifice de l'érudition. Son immolation s'accompagne du succès du pyrrhonisme, du triomphe de 1 histoire littéreire et philosophique." Barret-Kriegel, Blandine. La défaite de l'érudition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988, p. 280.
9 Schiller, Friedrich. A educação estética do homem numa série de cartas. São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2002, p. 22.
10 "Le goût des ouvrages de bel esprit et l'étude des sciences exactes a succédé parmi nous au goût de nos pères pour les matières de l'érudition. Les raison ? Il me semble... que les objets ordinaires de l'érudition sont comme épuisés par le grand nombre de gens de lettres qui se sont appliqués à ce genre; il n'y reste plus qu'a glaner et l'objet des découvertes qui sont encore à faire, étant d'ordinaire peu important et peu propre à piquer la curiosité. La découverte dam lrs mathématiques e la physique demande sans doute plus d'exercice de la parte de l'esprit, mais 1'objet en est plus attrayant, le champ plus vaste et d'ailleurs, elles flattent davantage l'amour-propre par leurs difficultés mimes". Apud Barret-Kriegel, Blandine. Op. cit., p. 308.
11 "L'histoire nationale est, pour tous les hommes du même pays, une sorte de propriété commune c'est une portion du patrimoine moral que chaque génération qui disparâit lègue à celle qui la remplace; aucune ne doit la transmettre telle qu'elle l'a reçu, mais toutes ont pour devoir d'y ajouter quelque chose en certitude et em clarté':.. "D'ou venons-nous, où allons-nous? Ces deux grandes questions, le passé et l'avenir politiques, nous préoccupent maintenant...". Thierry Augustin. Récits des temps mérovingiens précrdés de considérations sur l'histoire de France. Paris: Just Tessier, Libraire-Éditeur, 1842, p. 29-30.
12 " ...ce qui est urgent c'est de lui donner de la publicité par le rendre utile: il n'a eu jusqu'à present d'autres lecteurs que les membres et quelques rares abonnés. Ce serait un crime de l'abandonner dans ce cercle." 65th General Assembly of the Historical Institute of Paris, December 28, 1840. Bibliothèque de L'Arsenal. Code MS 9187.
13 "L'étude de l'histoire, dans l'état actuel des choses, nist-elle pas déshéitée de ce caractère d' universalité sans lequel elle peut êtreintérieure, spéciale, mais jamais ce qu'elle doit être, c'est-à dire générale et se livrant à l'examen de phénomènes qui concourrent à la formation et la marche des grandes agglomérations humaines ? Ce caractère d'universalité, convenons en, est encore, pour ainsi dire, en expectative, et dans une sorte de délassement apparent." Institut Historique. Procès Verbaux des Assemblées générales et du Consei1.1834-39. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Cote MS 9185, p. 2
14 "L'institut Historique etant fondé daru um bout general d'utilité, la première condition de son existence est d'avoir daru toutes les pays da membres qui appuient et secondent ses efforts." Institut Historique de Paris. Procès Verbaux des Assemblées generales et du Conseil. 183439. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Cote MS 9185. ]]>
15 In this respect, see the work of Wolf Lepenies. Das Ende der Naturgeschichte. Wandel kultureller Selbstverstanlichkeiten in den Wissenschaften des 18. und 19. fahrhunderts. Munchen: Hanser Verlag, 1976.
16 "..populariser l'institut et de lui assurer une tongue existence." Act of the second session of the Council of the Historical Institute of Paris, February 25^th 1835Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Cote MS 9185, p. 175.
17 Regarding Lenoir's role in the creation of the Musée des Monuments Français and his passion for antiquitarianism, see: Haskell, Francis. History and its images. Art and the interpretation of the past. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1993. See also Poulot, Dominique. Musée, nation, patrimoine 1789-1815. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
18 "Enrôlez toutes les intelligences historiques sous la mime bannière, avec cette divise, l'argement écrite: bien et progrès de l'humanité! Et plantez-la, cette bannière, dans le centre naturel de la science, à Paris!' Congrès Historique Europeen reuni a Paris, au nom de l'Institut Historique, dans la salle Saint Jean de l'Hotel de Ville. Paris: PH. Krabe, 1836. (Cote BNF Z-46096).
19 "Il y a quarante-cinq ans, ce soir, qu'a cette heure, la Bastille s'écroulait dans les flammes: ce fut le signal d'une révolution. Votre manifeste, Messieurs, ce serait celui d'une de ca régénerations pacifiques, qu'il n'est pas besoin d'attacher à des balles, ni de confier à la bouche de canons." Congrès Historique. Op. cit., p. viii.
20 Congrès Historique. Op. cit., p. 2-3.
21 " .. redonner à l'histoire son caractère sèvêre et la rendre, comme autrefois, la récompese de bons, la punition de méchans et la dernière raison des peuples!" Congrès Historique. Op. cit. p. G.