CHAPTER I.

THE PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE: BODIN.

I.

ONLY when French nationality, civilisation, and literature had reached a certain stage of development could reflection on history make its appearance in France. And when it did appear, the form in which it presented itself and the course which it followed were largely determined by the historical processes which it presupposed. What these were need not be here described. How French nationality was founded-how French civilisation gradually acquired the character which it exhibited in the sixteenth century-from what beginnings and through what stages French literature grew onwards to the same time-must be learned from such histories of France as those of Michelet and Martin, such histories of French civilisation as those of Guizot and Rambaud, and such histories of French literature as those of Ampère, Villemain, Nisard, and Demogeot. All that can here be attempted is very briefly to indicate the course of historical literature in France from its origin to the dawn of French historical speculation.1

1 The documents which relate to the early history of France are presented in the following collections: 1. Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France. (Commencé par les Bénédictins de la congrégation de Saint-Maur, et continué par l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres.) 22 vols., 1737-1865.-2. Collection des Mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France, depuis la fondation de la monarchie française jusqu'au xiiie siècle. Avec une introduction, des supplémens, des notices et des notes, par M. F. Guizot. 31 vols., 1824-1835.-3. Collection des Chroniques Nationales Françaises écrites en langue vulgaire, du xiiie au xvie siècle. Avec notes et éclaircissements par J. A. Bouchon. 47 vols., 1824-1829.-4. Collec

Until somewhat far on in the middle ages the composition of history in France, as elsewhere, was almost exclusively in the hands of priests and monks. This accounts for many of the defects and faults of medieval histories; but is also a fact which manifestly requires to be itself accounted for. The explanation of it can only be found in the ignorance of the laity and the predominance of ecclesiastical views and interests in those ages. The clergy almost alone wrote history, because very few others could write it or wished to write it, and because the history of the time was very largely Church history. The secular history of the early middle ages, crowded as it was with picturesque and tragic incidents, with events fateful for the whole future of the world, and with the most striking displays of human character, force, and passion, has strong attractions for the educated man of the present day, but it was too tumultuous and chaotic, too dark and woful, for the most reflective and best informed contemporaries to take pleasure in contemplating and describing it for its own sake. The Church of Christ struggling like a ship amidst the waves of a stormy sea, the monastery shining like a lamp through surrounding darkness, lives conspicuously devoted to the service of God, these alone carried a perceptible significance in them even to the few who possessed such scanty culture

tion complète des Mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France, depuis le règne de Philippe-Auguste, jusqu'à la Paix de Paris conclue en 1763. Avec des notices sur chaque auteur et des observations sur chaque ouvrage, par M. Petitot et M. Monmerqué. 131 vols., 1819-1829.-5. Nouvelle Collection des Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France depuis le xiiie siècle jusqu'à la fin du xviiie. Précédés de notices pour caractériser chaque auteur des mémoires et son époque ; suivis de l'analyse des documents historiques qui s'y rapportent. Par MM. Michaud et Poujoulat. 32 vols., 1836-1839.-6. Société de l'Histoire de France. 130 vols., 1833-1875. There are also two important collections which may be regarded as complementary and supplementary to those mentioned, viz.: 1. C. Leber, Collection des meilleurs Dissertations, Notices et Traités Particuliers relatifs à l'histoire de France, composée en grande partie de pièces rares, ou qui n'ont jamais été publiées séparément, pour servir à compléter toutes les collections de mémoires sur cette matière. 20 vols., 1838.-2. Bibliothèque de l'École de Chartes, revue d'érudition, consacrée spécialement à l'étude du moyen âge: 1839-1888. Indispensable as a guide to the contents of these collections and to the original authorities on the history of France is the bibliographical work of M. Alfred Franklin, Les Sources de l'Histoire de France, 1877. Also valuable is G. Monod, Bibliographie de l'Histoire de France, catalogue méthodique et chronologique des sources et des ouvrages relatifs à l'histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu'en 1789: 1888.

as was then attainable. Secular society required to develop a culture of its own, and to make for itself an intelligible history of its own, before it could obtain historians of its own.

The monasteries were the appropriate cradles of medieval historiography. They could not dispense with written memorials, and they afforded leisure and means of knowledge. It was almost a necessity, and it soon became the rule, for each monastery to have a scribe or recorder to commemorate whatever happened affecting the interests and obligations of the monastic community; and with these events there gradually came to be associated others of greater moment and wider influence. These records were added to, interpolated, corrected, and even recast, until they satisfied the heads of the institutions. Thus grew up the monastic chronicles. In close connection with them appeared another and more popular sort of ecclesiastical chronicles, namely, the biographies of distinguished churchmen and lives of the saints. These naturally led to the biographies of great laymen-of men who were recognised to have done things worthy of being recorded even by the hands of ecclesiastics, although they were never likely to be ecclesiastically canonised. Einhard's Life of Charlemagne is one of the earliest and best of these biographies.

The famous abbey of St Denis-at the instigation, it is thought, of Abbot Suger, one of the most remarkable men in French medieval history took the important step of making a collection of the best and most esteemed chronicles. To it new ones were added as they were composed. Thus the deeds of the kings of France were preserved in the archives of the same sacred building in the vaults of which their bodies reposed. And thus were formed what were called "the Great Chronicles of France," which came down to the reign of Louis XI. Long before the collection was completed, translations of these Latin chron

1 Suger (1082-1152) himself wrote a Vita Ludovici Grossi Regis which will be found in the Œuvres Complètes de Suger, recueillies, annotées et publiées d'après les manuscrits, par A. Legoy de la Marche, 1867. The best biographies of him are those of F. Combes, L'Abbé Suger, Histoire de son ministère et de sa régence, 1853; and of A. Vetauld, Vie de Suger, Tours, 1871. Also may be mentioned A. Huguenin, Étude sur l'Abbé Suger, 1855; the sketch in M. Louis de Carne's Fondateurs de l'unité française, 2 vols., 1856; and Baudrillart's Histoire du Luxe, tom. iii. ch. 5: Suger et son rôle dans le luxe.

M

icles into the vernacular began to be made for the laity. As was to be expected, the earliest translated was the most fabulous of all, that of the pseudo-Turpin concerning Charlemagne—a work which is the French counterpart of our Geoffrey of Monmouth's History, and the chief source of the romantic materials so skilfully employed by writers like Boccaccio and Ariosto. What are now called the Chronicles of France, or the Chronicles of St Denis, are not the Latin originals collected or composed by the monks of St Denis, but the French translations of these works, executed by the monks of St Denis or under their supervision.1

While the monks of St Denis-much to their credit-were composing chronicles in Latin or translating them into French, lay chroniclers began to appear who wrote of secular things in a secular spirit, and in the vernacular speech. The earliest was Villehardouin, and he was followed by Joinville, Froissart, Monstrelet, and Commines, with whom the series closed. Villehardouin died in 1213 and Commines in 1509, so that about three hundred years separated them. During the whole period England had no lay vernacular histories; and even Italy had none before the fourteenth century. The vernacular chronicle-variously called Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, and English -of which Britain is justly proud, and that of Nestor, the father of Russian historiography, long preceded, indeed, the French works referred to, but they also essentially differed from them in character. Aimé's History of Norman warfare in Southern Italy 2 is likewise earlier, but it can only be regarded as belonging to the same series if looked at merely from the linguistic point of view. It was in France that secular society first found truly representative historians. Yet not secular society as a whole; not the bourgeoisie, and

1 On the Chronicles of France, both in the older and later use of the term, see the prefaces of M. P. Paris to his edition of Les Grandes Chroniques de France, 6 vols., 1836-1838, and M. de la Curne's Mémoire sur les Principaux Monuments de France in the Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxii.

2 L'Istoire de li Normant et la Chronique de Robert Viscart, par Aimé, moine du Mont-Cassin. Publiées pour la première fois, d'après un manuscrit françois inédit du xiiie siècle, appartenant à la Bibliothèque royale, par ChampollionFigeac, 1835. As to the authorship of the second work, see R. Wilmans, Ist

Amatus von Monte Cassino der Verfasser der Chronica Roberti Biscardi? in Pertz, Archiv. (1849), x.