Gabriel Monod and the “Schools of History”: A Popular and Unheralded Historian
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The centennial of Gabriel Monod’s death gives the opportunity to shed light on his paradoxical fortune in the journal he created in 1876. Every classical narrative of the construction of the history profession in France describes him as one of the two fathers of history, along with Ernest Lavisse. But this statement is disavowed by the relative indifference which surrounds his work and life compared with historians such as Ernest Lavisse, Charles Seignobos and so on. Marc Bloch does not even mention Monod in the “Apologie pour l’histoire,” whereas Fustel de Coulanges, Mabillon and Seignobos are quoted quite often. Monod’s passion for the works and person of Michelet might explain such a paradoxical status, in a time when Michelet’s conceptions ceased to be considered valuable. Another clue would be the absolute singularity of Monod. But such an explanation does not fit well with the central position he was still occupying at that time. So the paper tends to consider that, if Monod’s case does not fill in the form of historical school, it is probably because the notion is most of the time inappropriate to write a comprehensive history of historiography.
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