FUSTEL de COULANGES, NUMA-DENYS. – Historian, born in Paris on 18 March 1830, died at Massy (Seine et Oise) on 12 September 1889. He was professor of medieval history at the Sorbonne from 1878, and director of the École normale from 1880 to 1882. After the Franco-Prussian War, he defended the French character of Alsace.
He occupies a primary place in the history of nineteenth-century European historiography on account of the Cité antique (1864) and the Histoire des institutions politiques de l'ancienne France (1884 ff.). In the first work he presents urban history in the classical world as centered on the cult of the dead: the city-state, which is an eminently sacred state, experienced the religion of death with an intensity greater than that of the cult of the major divinities; as religion declined, so did the tenor of political life. Following these ideas, F. de C. studies the dissolution of the union between the religious and the political-juridical factors, a dissolution that matured with the awakening of the lower classes, the crisis of the priestly class, etc.; revival came only with Christianity, which replaced fear of the gods with love of God and abolished the concept of the religion of family, castes, and lineages.
In the other work he studies the Roman juridical heritage in the state and governmental system that followed the Germanic invasions. The barbarians destroyed or imposed very little; instead, they were assimilated by Roman institutions (a striking example that the barbarians did not dislodge Roman civilization is their respect for the Latin language); moreover, according to F. de C., the Germans had no appreciable influence on religion. That the Germans did not influence feudalism is shown by the fact that Gallo-Germanic fusion preceded the institution of feudalism itself.
Many of F. de C.’s ideas have been abandoned by criticism, especially those concerning the classical world (indeed, he employs the sources rather naively); this does not diminish the importance of his having formulated certain solutions with a lucid realism that is by now outside Romantic idealism and that, even if it is not parallel to, coincides with the positivist movement.