DE VOGÜÉ, CHARLES-JEAN-MELCHIOR. - Archaeologist, b. in Paris on 18 Oct. 1829 to an ancient noble family from the Vivarais, and d. there on 10 Nov. 1916. In 1853-54 he made a journey through Syria, Palestine and Egypt, gathering abundant notes and drawings of monuments and inscriptions of those regions; he enlarged this collection on a second journey, made in 1861-62 together with Waddington and with the architect E. C. Duthoit; on that occasion he also went to Cyprus, where he likewise took an interest in the buildings of the early Christian period and those of the age of the Crusades; at Jerusalem he was able to obtain permission to study the sacred precinct of the temple (baram af-šarīf).
The publications that followed led to his being appointed in 1868 a member of the Académie des inscriptions. After 1870 he entered diplomacy: in 1871 he was sent as ambassador to Constantinople, then in 1875 to Vienna, where he remained until 1879. He thus passed into the second period of his life, turning to the study of modern history, to which he brought some good contributions (Le maréchal de Villars, d'après sa correspondance et des documents inédits, 1888; Mémoires de Villars, 1889; Le duc de Bourgogne et le duc de Beau Villiers, 1900), but he never abandoned the field he had previously cultivated, continuing among other things to concern himself with the direction of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. In 1891 he was elected to the Académie française.
His works on archaeology and Oriental epigraphy, and above all those on the Christian buildings of Syria and Palestine: Syrie centrale. Architecture civile et religieuse du Ier au VIIe siècle (Paris 1865-77); Eglises de la Terre Sainte (1859); Temple de Jérusalem and Essai sur la topographie de la ville sainte (1864-65) remain fundamental even today for the study of the early Christian architecture of these regions, and of the influences exercised by them on Byzantine and medieval architecture: an influence which de Vogüé, and many with him, almost surprised by the revelation of a world previously all but unknown, perhaps accentuated beyond measure, to the detriment of Roman and Western influences.
His other works, besides many minor contributions in periodicals and academic proceedings, are: Mélanges d'architecture orientale (1868); Événements de Syrie (1860); Syrie centrale-Inscriptions sémitiques (1869-77); Inscriptions hébraïques de Jérusalem (1864), etc.
Bibliography2 works
Pietro Romanelli