KURTH, GODEFROY. - Belgian historian, b. at Arlon on 11 May 1847, d. at Assche (Brussels) on 4 Jan. 1916. He studied at the École Normale attached to the University of Liège. In his youth he was a poet and novelist. A professor of history at the Royal Athenaeum of Liège in 1869, three years later he occupied 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 the international Eucharistic congresses and repeatedly defended freedom of teaching against those who sought to make of it a weapon of persecution.
K. is one of the founders of the Belgian historical school. He was the first to establish in Belgium, in accordance with what was already practiced in the German universities, a practical course in history, and thus introduced into his homeland the scientific method in historical research. Of German origin, he was endowed with a profound critical spirit, but his tenacity in erudite research was matched by no lesser a capacity for representation and synthesis, so that his works are distinguished not only for their historical erudition but also for their literary style. Even the apparently most arid text of the early Middle Ages takes on in him an unsuspected liveliness and immediacy: the first evidence of this is his work on the origins of modern civilization (Les origines de la civilisation moderne, 2 vols., Paris 1886). This was followed by the Histoire poétique des Mérovingiens (ibid. 1893), which is a patient inquiry into the limits of the historical reliability of Gregory of Tours, Fredegar and other contemporary historical documents, and by the powerful monograph on Clovis (Clovis, Tours 1896), which highlights the assimilating function of Christianity and the importance of the religious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, mention should be made of 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); furthermore, the 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.
Bibliography3 works
Silvio Furlani