Gabriel Monod

Gabriel Monod , born with Ingouville the March 7th 1844 and died in Versailles the April 10th 1912, is a Historien French.

Biography

Wire of an easy trader, Gabriel Monod is also the downward one of a long line of pastors and account 14 ministers of religion among his/her first cousins. By its origins, young person the Native of Le Havre profits from an early opening on the university and intellectual world and thus knows Ferdinand Buisson and Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. After its brilliant success with the aggregation, where it is received first in 1865, right in front of Ernest Lavisse, its marriage with Olga Herzen, girl of the Russian revolutionist Alexandre Herzen, will still accentuate its familiarity with European intelligentsia: Nietzsche, friend of the adoptive mother of Olga, Malwida von Meysenbug, makes him gift on this occasion of a musical composition.

In 1876, Monod founds with Gustave Fagniez the historical Revue . This publication, which marks the birth of a new historiographic school, is sponsored by the “old hand” such as Duruy, Taine, Fustel de Coulanges, Renan, like by some young historians in the future promising, of which Lavisse and Rambaud. The historical Revue is initially a body of combat against the Review of the historical Questions , animated by aristocrats ultramontanes and legitimists. It defends also a certain idea of the profession historian, such as work on files and the reference to the sources, and poses the first bases of the methodical history such as they will be theorized in the Introduction to the historical studies of Langlois and Seignobos, published in 1897.

Posting a certain neutrality with the political plan, the historical Revue remains however close to the protesting medium and freemason if one judges some by the origin of the majority of his collaborators. Fagniez, one of the rare catholics, leaves it in 1881 after the publication of an article against the Church. It especially defends, for this reason, the opportunist Republic, that of Ferry or Gambetta. Prototype of “the intellectual of left”, Monod will be in addition a decided supporter of Dreyfus.

President of the 4° section of the practical School of the high studies, professor with the National university in 1880 to compensate Lavisse, then with the Faculty of Arts of Paris in 1904, it is elected member of the Academy of Science morals and political in 1897. With its retirement in 1906, Monod receives a pulpit of the Collège de France, cut to measure, entitled “general history and historical method”.

During more than thirty years, its influence on the profession historian remains very deep. Monod, born scholar, did not have the charisma of Lavisse, its eternal alter ego (according to the contemporaries, its courses distilled a mortal trouble), but its impact on historiography remains however larger. If the École of Annals criticized with violence its skimped design of the history, a good portion of its methods of research keep all their acuity still today.

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