Auguste Prévost

Auguste Prévost , born with Bernay the June 3rd 1787 and died in Vaupalière the July 14th 1859, is a Géologue, Philologue, Archéologue and Historien French.

Course

At the same time as it carries out traditional solids studies and of right, Auguste Prévost impassions itself for the history and archeology, which leads it to learn, in addition to Latin and the Greek, English, Italian, German, Swedish, Hebrew and Sanskrit. Its encyclopedic knowledge, and the rigorous and critical method that it applies to its research, incontestably make of it an innovator in his time. Also in the beginning, with his/her friend, the resident of Caen Arcisse de Caumont, of research on the Romanesque architecture and Gothic in Normandy and France, it cofondé, in 1824, with this last, Charles de Gerville and the abbot Gervais of the Street, the Société of the antique dealers of Normandy, true “school moving of specialists in architecture” (Christmas). The Academy of Rouen having opened its doors in to him 1813, it will then chair, with various recoveries, the learned societies of the Seine-Lower and the the Eure. It will be received with the Académie of the inscriptions and the humanities in 1838.

Named Sub-prefect of Bernay in August 1814, it is revoked in November 1815.

Impassioned history Norman, it publishes work in five volumes of the Norman chronicler Orderic Vital. Among many scientific papers, it expresses its eclecticism by signing a Discours on romantic poetry (1825).

In 1830, it publishes two series of notes detailed on important discovered Gallo-Roman goldsmithery with Berthouville (the Eure) - “the treasure of Berthouville” -, fabulous collection of objects appearing today among the most invaluable parts of the cabinet of the medals of the National library. It is at the origin of the restoration of the Parlement of Rouen and the conservation of the Roman theater of Lillebonne.

In 1831, it starts a political career while being made elect general adviser of Bernay, then appointed in 1834. He will constantly be re-elected until in 1848. This faithful orleanist then sees disappearing the expensive mode in his heart, without to be opposed to the new republican mode: “The Republic and I, will say it with humor, we greet myself but we do not speak each other”. He devotes himself then again to his research, which he never gave up besides and which were worth to him the nickname of Norman Pausanias . He dies in 1859, practically blind man.

In its more famous novel, Nose-of-Leather (1936), Jean of Varende the fact of intervening when the hero, Roger de Tainchebraye, traverse the ruins of the Abbaye of Saint-Évroult and that it meets “a black man agitated, measuring, looking at, counting, active and tiny insect: it was Auguste Prévost, the archeologist of Bernay, the semi-founder of this science which was going to take such a rise”. Nose-of-Leather evokes, in connection with the abbey, a mysterious crypt and “various invaluable objects, rings and vine shoots of sticks, which would come from a lucky find made by here”…

Innumerable the historical and archaeological Notes of Prévost, remained new, was the subject of a publication in several volumes between 1866 and 1869 by Louis Passy and Léopold Delisle: they were largely used by generations of researchers and always make authority.

A street of Bernay bears the name of Auguste Prévost.

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