Gorce, Pierre de la

GORCE, PIERRE de la. - French historian, b. at Vannes on 29 June 1846, d. on 2 Jan. 1934. He studied at the Institut St-Jean in Douai and at the University of Paris, where he took his degree in law in 1870. He then embraced the career of magistrate, but after the promulgation of the decrees on the suppression of the religious Congregations in 1880, he resigned because, as a convinced Catholic, he did not intend to participate either directly or indirectly in the execution of decrees that profoundly repelled his spirit.

He therefore devoted himself to historical studies and investigated with particular diligence French history from the Revolution onward. His first work was a history of the Second Republic (Histoire de la seconde République française, 2 vols., Paris 1887), followed by an exhaustive exposition of that of the Second Empire (Histoire du second Empire, 7 vols., ibid. 1894-1905). The history of the Restoration and of the July Monarchy was analyzed by him in three biographies dedicated to the sovereigns of the period (Louis XVIII, ibid. 1926; Charles X, ibid. 1929; Louis-Philippe, ibid. 1931). On the relations between Church and State during the Revolution and in general on the Catholic religion in France in this period he published the still fundamental Histoire religieuse de la Révolution Française (5 vols., ibid. 1905-23), the fruit of patient research in the national and departmental archives.

Silvio Furlani