Claude Fauchet and his Library

Abstract

Gröber, in his history of Romance philology, recognizes Fauchet as the man who founded the study of mediaeval French literature “soweit es die ihm zugänglichen Hss. gestatteten.” England had to wait another two hundred years till Sharon Turner did her a like service with his History of England from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest (1795-1805). Fauchet was also a political historian of the mediaeval period, but in this field he had an illustrious predecessor, in the person of Jean Dutillet (d. 1570), lawyer and secretary to Henry II of France. This able man was commissioned by his king to investigate the trésor des chartres; the result was a six-volume report, La France ancienne, du gouvernement des trois estats en l'ordre de la justice de France avec les changements qui sont arrivés. This is the first modern history of a mediaeval period (the Capetian dynasty), and Dutillet followed it with treatises on the Albigensian Crusade and the Gallican Church, which were published after his death. Fauchet, following in Dutillet's footsteps, but on his own initiative, took as his province the first two dynasties of France. Before taking up the subject of his library it may be well to summarize what is known of Fauchet's life and work.