Arthur Giry

Jean-Marie Joseph Arthur Giry (born February 29, 1848 in Trévoux , † November 13, 1899 in Paris ) was a French diplomat and historian .

youth

Arthur Giry is the son of a tax collector in Joigny . After a classical training he entered the École nationale des chartes , where the lessons of Jules Quicherat moved him to study medieval history. At the same time, since its founding in 1868 , he pursued courses at the École pratique des hautes études and at the law faculty, where he was admitted in 1875 .

The historian

Giry began his research with the municipal deeds of Saint-Omer , his thesis at the École des chartes was entitled Prolégomènes du cartulaire de l'église Notre-Dame de Saint-Omer ( 1870 ). In 1874 he got a job at the École des hautes études and was appointed director of studies. His first major publication was Histoire de la ville de Saint-Omer et de ses institutions jusqu'au XIVe siècle ( 1877 ). He expanded his field of work to other cities, following the example of Augustin Thierry .

The systematic use of a large number of communal and departmental archives led to the renewal of historical research on French cities in the Middle Ages: his lectures at the École des hautes études on this subject resulted in several publications, including Les Établissements de Rouen ( 1883 - 1885 ), Étude sur les origines de la commune de Saint-Quentin ( 1887 ) and Sur les relations de La royauté avec les villes de France de 1180 à 1314 (document collection, 1885 ).

At the École des chartes Arthur Giry was assistant ( 1883 ) and then successor ( 1885 ) to Louis de Mas Latrie , after he had been secretary of the École for seven years (from 1878 ). With the work Manuel de diplomatique ( 1894 ), which is still in use today, he became the second father of diplomacy (after Jean Mabillon ). In 1896 he was elected to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres .

With his students, Giry contributed to the publication of Carolingian diplomas for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica as well as the annals of the epoch, where he himself was responsible for the reign of Charles the Bald . He died before he could finish the job.

Ex-libris Arthur Giry
bequeathed his library to the École nationale des chartes

Giry also studied the medieval texts dealing with technical methods in arts and crafts. He published a new edition of Theophilus Presbyter's Diversarum artium schedula and spent every Saturday morning in the laboratory of the chemist Aimé Girard (1830–1898) at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers ; his results found their way into the first volume of Marcellin Berthelot's work Chimie au Moyen Âge ( 1894 ). He took an active part in the Collection de textes relatifs à l'histoire du Moyen Âge , was responsible for the Histoire de France section in the Grande Encyclopédie , for which he wrote more than a hundred articles, and edited several chapters of the Histoire générale by Ernest Lavisse and Alfred Rambaud .

The Dreyfus Affair

Arthur Giry never hid his political views. As a friend of Paul Meyer and Gabriel Monod , he worked on the secular and republican Revue historique . Although a Freemason and free thinker, he never became politically active. He was a pure positivist , radical, scholar and atheist , but this did not prevent him from joining groups such as the Comité de défense des Arméniens or the Comité pour la protection des indigènes .

His skills as a diplomat and palaeographer were useful in the Dreyfus affair : he was appointed as an expert on the side of Émile and Auguste Molinier , Paul Meyer and Paul Viollet . In 1898 , Émile Zola asked him to examine the bordereau of October 13, 1894 and to determine whether it was Alfred Dreyfus's font . His expertise revealed Dreyfus' innocence and the similarity of the typeface with Esterházy's handwriting . He took part in the founding of the Ligue française pour la défense des droits de l'homme et du citoyen and became a member of its first board.

In 1899 he was summoned (alongside Marin-Étienne Charavay , Paul Meyer and Auguste Molinier) to take part in the trial before the Court of Cassation , in which he expressly attributed the Borderau to Esterházy, whereupon the court overturned the judgment of 1894. He took part in the second Dreyfus trial in Rennes in the same year, but died a little later. Numerous personalities attended his funeral on the Cimetière Montparnasse , including Zola and Joseph Reinach . The strict Catholic Paul Viollet read a speech that extolled the humanism of the Voltairian Giry.

Works

• L'École des chartes , 1875
• Les établissements de Rouen , 1883
• Analysis et extraits d'un registre des archives municipales de Saint-Omer, 1166-1778 , 1875
• Notes on l'Influence artistique du Roi René , 1875
• Histoire de la ville de Saint-Omer et de ses institutions , 1877 (2nd place at the Prix ​​Gobert 1878 of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres )
• Notice sur un traité du Moyen Âge intitulé: De coloribus et artibus Romanorum , 1878
• Recueil de fac-similés à l'usage de l'École des chartes , 1880
• Chartes de Saint-Martin de Tours collationnés par Baluze , 1881
• Cartulaires de l'église de Térouane , 1881
• Jules Quicherat, 1814-1882 , 1882
• Documents on the relations de la royauté avec les villes en France de 1180 à 1314 , 1885
• Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire , 1885–1886
• Études sur les origines de la commune de Saint-Quentin , 1887
• Les derniers Carolingiens, Lothaire, Louis V, Charles de Lorraine (954-991) , 1891
• Manuel de diplomatique: diplômes et chartes, chronologie technique, éléments critiques et parties constitutives de la teneur des chartes, les chancelleries, les actes privés , 1894
• La Donation de Rueil à l'abbaye de Saint-Denis, examen critique de trois diplômes de Charles le Chauve , 1895
• La France et l'Affaire Dreyfus , 1899.
• Étude critique de quelques documents angevins de l'époque carolingienne , 1900
• Notices bibliographiques sur les archives des églises et des monastères de l'époque carolingienne , 1901
• Monuments de l'histoire des abbayes de Saint-Philibert (Noirmoutier, Grandlieu, Tournus) , 1905
• Recueil des actes de Charles II le Chauve, roi de France , begun by Arthur Giry, continued by Maurice Prou , completed under the direction of Ferdinand Lot and Clovis Brunel , 1955

literature

• Henri Omont , Notice sur la vie et les travaux de M. Arthur Giry membre de l'Institut, professeur à l'École nationale des chartes , in Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes , No. 62, 1901, pp. 5-14 ,