KURTH, GODEFROY. — Belgian historian, born in Arlon on 11 May 1847, died at Assche (Brussels) on 4 January 1916. He studied at the École Normale attached to the University of Liège. As a young man he was a poet and novelist. Professor of history at the Royal Athenaeum of Liège in 1869, three years later he assumed the chair of history at that University and remained there until 1906, when he became director of the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome. A convinced Catholic, he took an active part in international Eucharistic congresses and repeatedly defended freedom of education against those who intended to turn it into a weapon of persecution.
K. was one of the founders of the Belgian historical school. He was the first to establish in Belgium, following the practice already in place in German universities, a practical course in history, and thus introduced the scientific method into historical research in his homeland. Of German origin, he possessed a profound critical spirit, but his tenacity in scholarly research was matched by no lesser capacity for representation and synthesis, so that his works are distinguished not only by their historical erudition but also by their literary style. Even the apparently driest text
of the early Middle Ages acquired in his hands an unexpected vividness and immediacy: the first testimony to this is his work on the origins of modern civilization (Les origines de la civilisation moderne, 2 vols., Paris 1886). This was followed by Histoire poétique des Mérovingiens (ibid. 1893), a patient investigation into the limits of the historical fidelity of Gregory of Tours, Fredegar, and other contemporary historical documents, and by the powerful monograph
on Clovis (Clovis, Tours 1896), which highlights the assimilating function of Christianity and the importance of the religious unity established, after the conversion of this sovereign, between the Gauls and the Franks. Among his other works are those on the history of Liège in the Middle Ages: the two volumes on Notger de Liège et la civilisation au Xe siècle (Paris 1905) and the three volumes on La cité de Liège au moyen âge (Brussels–Liège 1910); in addition, Etudes franques (2 vols., Brussels 1919) and the brilliant volume L'Église aux tournants de l'histoire, 6th ed., Brussels 1927. From 1897 to 1907 K. directed the Bulletin de la Commission royale d'histoire, published by the Royal Academy of Belgium, of which he had become a member in 1894. In 1899 he founded the historical journal Archives belges.