oxford art j 1988 poulot 40 56

The Birth of Heritage: 'le moment Guizot'

DOMINIQUE POULOT

In Europe today, the concept of heritage* hasbecome spectacularly topical, a topicality promotedby investment from interested parties in financial,political and intellectual quarters. Various studieshave shown the social effects that a given act ofprotection (or 'classification', according to Bour-dieu) can produce in the urban fabric.1 Other writershave denounced the ideological, directly politicalcharacter of such celebrations of the national culturalheritage, especially on the occasion of TAnnee du •Patrimoine' (Heritage Year), going beyond the'Jacobin' or Left tradition of such criticism.2 And,very recently, the recognition of tourism's and themedia's whole-hearted exploitation of the spectacleof heritage has provoked a series of critical essaysand a cultural geography of the phenomenon,although with a bias towards America.3 In parallel,within the universities, the premises of a modern,contemporary archaeology, clearly linked to indus-trial archaeology, are being worked out with theambition of dominating the elusive discourse ofheritage.4

Heritage's metamorphoses

Considered in terms of the evolution of its vocabu-lary and in relation to different mentalite's, themodern cult of heritage has had three principlephases. Firstly, the word signifies a possession,whether property or furniture; it refers to the right ofownership. Objects are valued as relics whichprovide a pretext for the promotion of a groupidentity through respect for traditions, the reassur-ance of established opinions, and the maintenanceof an inheritance. From this perspective, Frenchsociety has no common possessions; yet, at the sametime, certain of its members possess inheritances ofdiverse, indeed contradictory, value and interestlinked to specific social comportments, which theyinform and cultivate. Ultimately indifferent to theinherent value of the object, this mode of heritage isnonetheless resistant to any form of rational or scien-tific legitimation of its conservation and upkeep. Itsuse is wholly 'practical', that, so to speak, of a familyinheritance.

* Heritage is clearly an unsatisfactory rendition of patrimoine, but aconvenient, consistent short hand equivalent was needed so as to avoidrepeated long-winded circumlocutions. Every now and again, theoriginal has been retained as a reminder of this difference. Patrimoine hasa specifically national ring to it, and is less vacuous than heritage, and istherefore more rather than less a subject of contention. Neither is thereyet an English adjective deriving from heritage as with patrimonial — nodoubt someone will soon coin a term. (Trans.)

The second sense of patrimoine appeared with themodern nation state. In confiscating first Churchproperty, then that of the crown and emigres, theRevolution deprived almost all the monuments ofFrench memory of their traditional guardians andthreatened them with privatisation. The urgent andcompletely unprecedented character of the situationopened the way for a general, systematic conserva-tion project, based on Enlightenment ideas. InOctober 1790, a patriot and antiquarian, Puthod deMaison Rouge, defined the predicament and itsrisks in a petition:

For every collector who might acquire a share of thesemonuments, how many people will have no idea of theirworth! And, even were all the owners to be collectors, theheritage of a few such individuals would not be that of thenation.5

In the wake of the Revolution, Conservation wasexplicitly devoted to a national history stripped ofpast prejudices, and conditioned by present circum-stances in the form of an entirely remodelled society.This definition was at the heart of reconstructedconservation, as, indeed, it was of revolutionaryculture as a whole (Mona Ozouf). Dominated by themuseum-inspired schema of a selection of items,heritage was identified with a new, carefully demar-cated cultural foundation and not with 'natural',hereditary transmission. The nineteenth centurysaw the triumph of a representation of an ordered(raisonne) heritage, governed by the citizens' faith inscience and progress. The historical, that is, scien-tific, value of monuments came to supersede theirintended original significance, whether was merelyforgotten or challenged. In the name of its responsi-bility for the future, and of the universal civilisationof which it was part, the patrie initiated a scholarlyinventory of the eternal masterpieces and specimensof each epoch.

Finally, according to Alois Riegl, linked to themovement towards the emancipation of the indivi-dual, in the age of the masses heritage was appre-ciated 'only [for its] subjective and affective effect':the past was considered not for its own sake; it wasculturally and socially democratic because it waspurely a matter of feeling. This mode of heritage wasthat of tourist crowds' naive emotion, suited toimmediate consumption. In his Modem Cult of Monu-ments (1903), Riegl brilliantly observed that whathad been lost in intensity was gained in scope, a lackof depth compensated for by 'the multitude and

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variety of the traces of oldness'. The success ofMaurice Barres's campaign6 to have all Frenchchurches classified on sentimental, rather thanhistorical or artistic grounds, confirmed hisprophesy: 'if the nineteenth century was the centuryof historical value, the twentieth century seems to bethat of the value of oldness'.

Two or three generations later, the proposition byJean-Philippe Lecat, the French Minister of Cultureat the time of Heritage Year, that 'a priori everythingshould be considered an element of heritage', apartfrom signalling an apparently democratic enjoymentof the past, in fact manifests nothing less than theend of the line in thinking about heritage. Yet thisbankruptcy was not unexpected. For heritage-for-the-masses is not supported by any metadiscourse(of progress or of history), neither is it rooted inindividuals' pasts; this was quickly understood bythose historians who have diagnosed a loss of collec-tive memory and a breakdown of communicationbetween the present and the past.7 It is defined onlyby an opposition to the present, whose touchstoneis novelty value; in its insatiable search for objects, itcaters for nothing beyond individual desires. Buttoday the old seems less different than out of focus —hence very close, whereas the modern is marked by asense of deja vu — according to Christopher Lasch,this narcissistic culture has lost all interest in thefuture.8

For at least the last decade, official speeches haveemphasised the contemporary currency of it to thepoint of making it the leit-motiv of any remarks onconservation. Administrative vocabulary itself hasbeen marked by this — from Jack Lang's 'newheritages' to the colloquium on 'Historical Monu-ments Tomorrow' (1984), the National Meetings ofthe Ecomuseums ('Forward Memory!', 1986), orthe Heritage Forum at the Cite des Sciences et del'lndustrie de la Villette (1987).9 Moreover, aproliferating professional literature has set to worksurveying the thousand and one ways in which onecan create an unknown heritage, or redesignatethe familiar so that it can be dusted off andunveiled.

Whether 'heritage' itself, at least in its classic form,can survive such a mobilisation of memories is by nomeans certain. For heritage has become a rawmaterial needing to be transformed, a deposit to begiven value, and an economic sector to be developed.This attitude or process has nothing to do with thecommonplace idea that, in each period, heritageacquires different significance and legitimacy in sofar as it answers the needs of the times. Each periodwould seem to arrive at its own definition of heritageand fashion it according to its own interests. Butheritage had always been envisaged as other, and cutoff from the present for different reasons — memory,history, feeling. Each successive perception of thepast — the search for origins, the inventory ofsources by historical science, the nostalgic review oftimes past — has been superceded by contemporary

society's amnesia, the crisis of discourse of historyand the evanescence of the New.

At the end of the 1980s, the status of heritage isthat of something wholly of the present. Heritage isadaptable, not in Chateaubriand's sense when heevoked the necessity of a 'predisposition suitable forthe calm recollection of the past', but rather in theimage of the historical monument as a commodity ofpost-modern architecture and the redevelopment ofold city centres.10 If heritage strives to capitalise onits ubiquitous, multifarious potential uses, it risksbecoming reduced to the level and uncertainty offashion, as if, having been divested of the fixity of thepast, it had become the plaything of the present.More certainly, and perhaps also more seriously,heritage promises to become part of a timelesspresent, where the past no longer passes but is keptin continual unpredictable use.

It is therefore all the more important to return tothe moment of the term's foundation: to recover,beyond common-sense banalities (the struggleagainst vandalism, the need to preserve the past. . .)the precise originality and significance of an intellec-tual project which, today, has been rendered banal,or simply lost sight of. In what follows we will focuson Guizot's seminal role in the inauguration of thecontemporary history of heritage through an analy-sis of his 1830 Rapport.

Born in Nimes in 1787 of a Protestant father whoperished during the Terror, Francois Guizot was theproduct of a Genevan education, as solid as it wasaustere. Subsequently installed in Paris, throughworking for bookshops and on articles, translations(including Gibbon), and reviews of all sorts, Guizotmade himself into something of a polymath. Hismarriage to Pauline de Meulan, with whom he hadalready collaborated, firmly established him in theworld of publishing. In 1812, he was appointed to achair of modern history at the Sorbonne at the age oftwenty-five and had to develop an appropriatemastery of history; at this time he also became thefriend of Royer-Collard. The Restoration removedhim from the University into a political and adminis-trative career thanks to the group of doctrinaires that,henceforward, he would represent: initially generalsecretary at the Ministry of the Interior, he waseventually to become director of departmental andcommunal administration until the purge whichfollowed the fall of the Decazes (1820) returned himto the Sorbonne. There he gave a two year course onLes Origines du gouvernement repre'sentatif en Europe.

As a result of his opposition to the ministries ofRichelieu and above all Villele, in October 1822 hewas forbidden from teaching and began an intense,productive period of publishing articles, pamphlets,translations and editions of texts (including theObservations sur I'Histoire de France by Mably in 1823,complemented by his own Essais sur I'Histoire de

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France). Most importantly, the first two volumes ofhis Histoire de la Revolution d'Angleterre appeared in1826 and 1827. The return of the Liberals in 1828restored him to his post, and led to his key work,L'Histoire de la Civilisation en Europe, followed byL'Histoire de la Civilisation en France (1828-1830). In1827 he was founder of the famous 'Aide-toi, le Cielt'aidera' society. In January 1830 he became Deputyfor Lisieux, later organising the Deputies' protestagainst the July Ordonnances and in due coursebecoming Minister of the Interior in Louis-Philippe's first government. Between 1832 and 1837,he was at the head of the Ministry of Public Instruc-tion, where, with the law of June 1833, he wasresponsible for the extension of primary education,the restoration of the Academie des Sciencesmorales et politiques, the foundation of the Societede PHistoire de France and the Service des Monu-ments historiques."

The aim of the Service was defined in the Rapportpresente au Roi pour faire instituer un inspecteur general desmonuments historiques en France (21 October 1830),supplemented four years later by the Rapport au Roisur les mesures prescrites pour la recherche et la publicationdes Documents inedits relatifs a I'Histoire de France(27 November 1834). For Guizot:

the history of the arts should have a place in the vast bodyof research which embraces all parts of the nationalexistence and destiny. Perhaps nothing can more vividlyreveal to us the social state and true spirit of past genera-tions than the study of their religious, civil, public, anddomestic monuments, and the ideas and various conven-tions which were involved in their construction, the study,in a word, of all the examples and all the varieties ofarchitecture which is, at one and the same time, thebeginning and fulfilment of all the arts.

He proposed

to initiate immediately a significant study on the subject:[. . .] [to] have executed a full inventory, a descriptive andsystematic catalogue of all types of buildings from allperiods which have appeared and still survive on Frenchsoil. [. . .] This enterprise must not be an accidental orephemeral initiative; it must be a sustained homage and,so to speak, a lasting institution in honour of France'sorigins, her memories and her glory.

A singular critical fortune

The history of the administration of historical monu-ments in France has not yet been written, at least notin a way which goes beyond a mere chronicle or theparading of an ancestral gallery.12 When set inmotion by a twinge of historical conscience, suchedifying narratives all too often evade any seriousexamination of the basic concepts involved. It is forthis reason that accounts of the Service des Monu-ments historiques have paid no attention to thesituation between 1820 and 1830. Hence the value ofa scrutinising of the primary sources which attends

to the readily legible dimension of philosophical andhistorical purpose and political intention.13

Certainly, Guizot and his famous Rapport soughtto elicit the favour of a potentially influential public.The report itself encourages research concerning thedistribution of responsibilities, which has sometimesdegenerated into pedantic 'legalistic' disputes.14 Yetthe 'Monsieur Guizot' who appears in the History ofFrance has been allocated no more than a modestplace within the 'modern cult of monuments"official genealogy.15 Indeed, the praises bestowed onthe philosopher-historian omit any consideration ofthe scope of his thought on the significance ofarchaeology.

Such treatment is partly the result of the 'taboowhich applies to Louis-Philippe and Guizot'.16

Above all it forms part of a particular historiographyof patrimoine which defers to patriotic imagery.Guizot is only a name in the long list of the defendersof France's artistic riches. In histories of past sensi-bilities he has not been separated from the Romanticcentury's supporting cast. Finally, surveys of hisgovernment have relegated his conservation initia-tives to the level of anecdote, and to the margins ofan otherwise substantial legacy.

Guizot seems to have been the victim of a selectiveamnesia regarding heritage in the interests of, on theone hand, a small pioneer group from which he isexcluded and, on the other hand, organisationswhich he set up without directly participating in.Thus, in 1887, Antonin Proust, 'Minister of Culture'in Gambetta's cabinet during the Third Republic,referred to only five predecessors: Alexandre Lenoir,perhaps by virtue of his fame,17 Chateaubriand andVictor Hugo, the indispensable geniuses of thecause, and finally Augustin Thierry and ProsperMerimee. Thierry provided the erudite legitimacy ofthe undertaking: 'In these books [of stone] one findswhat Augustin Thierry called the soul of history;and we have only learnt to read them thanks to himand to the great founders of the historical school ofthe nineteenth century.'18 Merimee takes his place asfounder of the Republican administration by havingproposed 'the union of all the services concerningthe arts' in the wake of the February Revolution.

Guizot's eclipse is not solely the result of thecondemnation of his politics, although this played apart. His reputation as a 'conservationist' sufferedfrom disparagement of his inadequate 'Frenchness'more than from reproaches of his conservatism andincomprehension.19 What is more, he did notembrace the patriotic enthusiasm judged appro-priate — with romantic and mediaevalising taste —to a concern with heritage. The strained haughtinessof his Histoire moderne has been judged to suffer froma 'lack of affective impurity',20 also evident in hisproject to open an 'ideological' museum at Ver-sailles, which Louis-Philippe's political sense trans-formed into a spectacle capable of moving publicopinion to the benefit of the new dynasty.21

But while Guizot's exclusion from the annals of

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Heritage may be a consequence of the lastingdiscredit which was to attach to him, more than thatit also implies the existence of a latent nationalconsensus regarding heritage. To confine the initia-tive and official responsibility for the protection ofmonuments to a single figure — even a statesman —would be misleading, if not a distortion. In place ofthis, manifestations of a collective responsibility —such as the vote of the revolutionary Assemblies oralternatively the demands of cultured society duringthe Restoration — suggest a national community inthe process of questioning its past.

The discourse of heritage paints a pious picture ofits own evolution progressing from the couragiousdeterrence of 'vandalism', to a learned selflessness,treating the creation of an administration as merely aconcern of scholarship. However, Guizot is onlyinvoked here in order to deny his originality, or thathe had any effective responsibility. He plays the roleof the interpreter, albeit far-seeing, of the progress ofopinion linked to the new spirit in the arts and inhistory; his great merit is seen as being to have beenable to obtain the necessary government sanction.Such an interpretation adopts, broadly speaking, thephilosophy of the doctrinaires, who, with Royer-Collard and Guizot at their head, thought thatpolitical decisions should only ratify or sanctionsocial evolution and the course of ideas. However,this is not to say that they were 'liberal': for them, therole of the State was indispensable and a policy oflaissez-faire unrealistic.

The classic political histories of the July Mon-archy interpret Guizot's policy on heritage as acontrived deflection of criticism and antagonismdirected at the Chamber of Deputies. One inter-pretation of the July Monarchy sees in thesemeasures a Machiavellian emasculation of the intel-lectual class.22 Today, Guizot's attitude to heritagehas come to be described as 'a pendant to the farce ofthe national "Enrich yourselves" motto'.23 This con-stitutes 'the fictive heritage of the disinherited', and'the alibi of private economic property' to such adegree that the denunciation of this particular 'con-nivance between capitalism and heritage'24 providesthe ultimate condemnation of the regime. For anoppositional ideology, which identifies the conquer-ing bourgeois as the harbinger of decadence, Guizotstands as nothing less than the first overseer of theWest's spiritual decline.25

Beyond such peremptory judgements, analyses ofGuizot's involvement with heritage are above allconcerned with the 1833 project for a 'generalpublication of all the important and as yet un-published materials on the history of our country',the foundation of the Societe de l'Histoire de Franceand the Comite des Travaux historiques. Theimportance of this legacy is not disputed.26 Aboveall, for many, such as Charles-Olivier Carbonell,'better than anything else, this historiographicalinstitution shows the indissociability of the linksbetween the statesman and the historian'.27

Thus Guizot's archaeological initiative in relationto historical monuments is relegated to a more orless obscure position relative to his work regardingarchives. Perhapsjustly so if one considers that, evenwithout mentioning the intrinsic scientific contribu-tion — which is disputed by scholars — Guizot'squalifications and interest in the matter seem at firstsight singularly less significant than his historicalworks and his initiative on archives.28 Even thoughthis episode is hardly mentioned in accounts of'Monsieur Guizot's' political career and historicalideas, it is worth closer inspection.

We need here to put aside the protocols ofcommemoration — whether positive or otherwise —that attach to the first architect of heritage, and torecognise the inherent unity of the project behindthe measures taken and the statements made, butwithout reducing this simply to a question of politi-cal concerns. On the contrary, this representation ofthe historical monument in the public life of the firsthalf of the nineteenth century provides an excellentillustration of the epistemological uncertainty of thepolitical dimension itself, shared in the exemplarycase of Guizot between 'the historian of ideas, thephilosopher and the historian of facts and institu-tions'.29

The new history and its project

In the first course that Guizot taught on the originsof representative government in Europe, he affirmedthat 'the past changes with the present'; 'everythingchanges in and around man . . . [as does] the point ofview from which he considers the facts and theexpectations that he brings to this examination.'30

The professor here considers historiographical acti-vity from an historicist point of view: 'according totheir political state and the degree of civilisation,peoples consider history under a given aspect, andseek from it a given kind of interest.'31 To the 'firstage of societies' there belonged a poetical history,'brilliant and naive narrations which charmed anavid curiosity that was easy to satisfy' — for example,Herodotus. After which there followed a philosophi-cal history: a 'series of dissertations on the progressof humanity', of which Gibbon and Hume producedremarkable examples, appropriate to 'a time ofenlightenment, of wealth and leisure'. Finally, a'practical' history, exemplified by Thucydides orLord Clarendon, provided 'guidance analogous tothe needs that were experienced, to life as it waslived'; it corresponded to 'an animated and strongpolitical life'. Today, 'as the result of an exceptionalcombination of circumstances, all these tastes andconditions seem to be united . . . and, in our owntime, history is susceptible to all these kinds ofinterest'.

Indeed, history bore witness to a new respect forthe fundamental principle of civilisation, the 'ele-vated idea which leads and dominates wherever thehuman spirit moves: equal and universal justice'.32

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For Guizot, respect for the past 'carries with itneither approval nor silence about whatever is false,guilty or harmful . . . Time has not received theimpious mission of consecrating evil or error. Theyare, on the contrary, revealed and cast aside.'

Within this scheme of things, acting on this abso-lute imperative, the nineteenth century manifests anactive conscience: 'few people think it, perhaps, butimpartiality, which is the duty of all times, is, in myopinion, the vocation of our age; not', he immedi-ately added by way of qualification, 'that cold andsterile impartiality born of indifference, but a vigo-rous and fertile impartiality inspired by the love andvision of truth.'

The intellectual probity of the new history wasintimately linked to its social effectiveness. In this,the high point of historical thought was also the timeof its going public: when minds had 'become cap-able of understanding man across all levels of civili-sation' and had the freedom to employ thiscapability, 'heritage no longer belonged to scholarsalone'. In short, 'history's utility is no longer, as itused to be, a general idea, a sort of literary and moraldogma, professed by writers rather than adoptedand practised by the public. Now it is a necessity forthe citizen who wants to take part in the affairs of hiscountry, or only to be properly informed'. The taskof the historian was at one and the same time ethicaland political.

The Corns d'Histoire modeme is both an historian'shandbook and a political breviary, whose pro-gramme is summed up as follows:

to discover the truth, and to realise it in the externalworld, to the advantage of society; to turn it withinourselves into beliefs capable of inspiring us with thatdisinterestedness and moral energy which are the forceand the dignity of man in this world.33

In these two regards, in 1830 an engagement withthe conservation of the past had a clear contem-porary relevance. Firstly, it had to serve societythrough encouraging respect for the higher order ofjustice as much as was humanly possible.34

Secondly, it was also supposed to accord with a new,synthetic historical truth which superseded tradi-tional surveys earlier.

In the course of the social and political disruptionsat the beginning of the nineteenth century, manymonuments changed hands with the result that theycame to depend on the exclusive right of their indi-vidual owners. More generally, the upkeep andconservation of traditional heritage was threatenedby the general social instability of the period. As aconsequence, a limitation of freedom of ownershipwas argued for, so as to guarantee the collectiveenjoyment of Beauty and History.3^ How was itpossible to combine social legitimacy and theinterests of civilisation without appealing to theState? In 1822, according to Guizot: 'politics must beauthentic, that is to say, national.'36 Ten years later,

the Inspection des Monuments historiques wasdesigned to fulfil this programme.

In parallel with this development, the nature ofhistorical truth underwent a complete transforma-tion. Guizot, who had participated in this historio-graphical revolution, wanted to unite 'poetical truth'with 'philosophical history as a study of the general,progressive organisation of events'.37 In the field ofarchaeological studies, the historian triumphed overthe antiquarian and, as Arnoldo Momigliano haspointed out, chronologically demonstrative narra-tive replaced the systematic survey.38

How was it possible to conceptualise philosophi-cal history conjointly with the statistical inventory,and go beyond the principle of 'maintaining boththe rigour of scientific method and the legitimatedomain of the intellect'.39 The unity of the point ofview adopted — grounded in an idea of civilisation— allowed the historian to 'teach the past not onlyfrom memory but according to his understanding ofit'.40 Thus, the conservation of monuments receivedan intellectual and scholarly, as much as a politicaland social, legitimacy.

The theory of patrimoine

Every society, according to Guizot, requires thecultivation of its memory. In contrast to the desirefor a tabula rasa — 'this fever which sometimes seizespeoples in the midst of the most useful, the mostglorious of regenerations' — the hero of Guizot'sEnglish Revolution, Cromwell, ensured that goodsense, that is conservation, prevailed. For, 'peoplescan, for a moment, in the middle of a violent crisis,deny their past, even curse it; but they are unable toforget it, nor to detach themselves from it for long ordefinitively'.41

Yet the past was not all equally important to thepresent. It was a question of distinguishing 'expend-able events' from the 'immortal portion of history'. Ifthe former soon become insignificant to us, 'allgenerations need to participate ('in general events')in order to understand the past and themselves'.42 Inshort, recourse to the past must be reasonable, as isthe case for all human activities for which contem-porary civilisation requires 'legitimacy of motive andutility of results'.43

This requirement is enough to distinguish abso-lutely the nineteenth-century approach to conserva-tion from earlier attitudes. Quite distinct from thevocabulary of banal polemics between revolutionaryand counter-revolutionary opinions, Guizot neitherresorted to denunciations of 'vandalism', nor calledfor the resurrection of defunct memories as did theroyalist 'ultras'. He understood heritage in sociologi-cal terms as public opinion. Indeed, for Guizot, theweakening — if not the disappearance — of tradi-tional forms of conservation, followed from a weak-ening of social powers linked to the transformationsundergone by civilisation itself.

At the heart of Guizot's Cours, the spirit of tradi-


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tion was personified by a character borrowed from fic-tion — not the only case of an exchange between his-tory and fiction in the name of local colour.44 This is inan extract from Walter Scott's The Puritans regarding'the tombs of puritan martyrs which were still theobject of respect and devotion by their partisans':

Sixty years ago . . . someone called Robert Patterson,descendant, so they say, of one of the victims of persecu-tion, left his house and his small inheritance to devotehimself to the care of these humble tombs. [. . .] Hishospitality was ensured by the families of the martyrs andthe supporters of the sect. [.. .] The people, not knowinghis true name, gave him the name Old Mortality after hischosen task.43

This 'archaic' mode of conservation, with its reli-gious or familial dimension corresponds to whatGuizot called society's state of 'Government'.According to Guizot, its contemporary declinecorresponded to the decline of 'social powers of allkinds which used to exist, from domestic powerswhich remain within the family, to public powerswhich are placed at the summit of the State'. Untilrecently responsible for 'relations between men,regardless of their wishes', such powers were noweffaced to the advantage of an 'ungoverned society,which subsists by the free development of intellectand human will', invoked as 'the basis of the socialstate'.46

Thus the motive behind conservationist concernseems to pass from the 'perpetuity and regularity . . .imposed by the authorities' to the personal energy ofindividuals. Particularly because of the disappear-ance of various social bodies, or, more exactly, theremodelling of their past, the upkeep of abandonedmonuments required a form of individual memory,possibly mobilized within a new social order. 'Spon-taneous' conservation had somehow to make up forthe loss of an obligatory conservation. The protec-tion of heritage which resulted from his new state ofaffairs was anything but arbitrary, for, Guizotexplains, it was henceforth guided by the twin lightsof intellect and justice.

The administration of patrimoine

As with the example of Old Mortality, the evidentnecessity for a modern approach to conservationrequired someone to carry out this recuperativeendeavour. The state would confer on such a personthe responsibility for sanctioning appropriate initia-tives by capable individuals, and for implementingthem as and when necessary. This responsibilitydevolved on the state entirely naturally, arguedGuizot, since, 'generally speaking, power [belongs]to superior ability and therefore superiority [is] thenatural and legitimate situation of power'.47 It wasnot a matter for legislation, in the form of 'morallaws' because the progress of civilisation made the'form[s] of preaching, or means of teaching' ofarchaic times redundant. In Guizot's opinion, the

nineteenth century was to know only 'wise lawswhich have confidence in [people's] morality, inindividuals' rationality, and which leave everythingwhich is purely moral in the domain of freedom'.48

The Inspector of historical monuments, the newlydesignated custodian of heritage, thus had as hismission:

to put himself in direct contact with the authorities andpersons who concern themselves with researches relevantto the local history of each locality, to inform owners andholders of the interest of the buildings whose conservationdepends on their care, and, finally, to stimulate, throughguiding them, the zeal of all the Department and munici-pal councils in such a way as to prevent any monument ofan incontestable merit from perishing through ignoranceand haste, without the appropriate authorities havingtried all possible methods to ensure its conservation, andalso in such a way that the authorities' and individuals'good will is not expended on objects unworthy of their

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Thanks to the abundant provision of informationby the social body responsible — administrators andowners working in collaboration — the Inspectorwas to make even 'the most difficult people aware ofthe necessity the government finds itself in of activelyprotecting the interests of art and history'. He was to'harness the good intentions manifested acrossalmost the whole of France', according to an imageof the state as a 'centre of initiative and coordinationfor a wide network of relatively autonomous knowl-edge and influences'.50 In order to be crowned withsuccess, whether 'rational or social', the undertakingwould have to satisfy both scholarly needs (impar-tiality and exhaustiveness of the survey), as well asthe principles of government (freedom of initiative,guarantee of property, decentralisation . . .). Thetask of the Inspector General required above all thepolitical talent whose ideal Guizot had sketched inhis Cours: 'a combination of the remoteness andphilosopher's powers of rational inference with theflexibility of mind and good sense of the expert'.'1

An almost commercial formula, coined by Vitet inrelation to libraries, sums up well this enlightenedpragmatism: 'We must bring life to these emporia ofunfashionable merchandise without consumers, bylinking them to the present.'32 A civilisation's heri-tage was also that of common sense and generalopinion, that is, of preconceived ideas, or 'the forceof things'.53 In short, it was a question of 'giving life'to a 'ready made' heritage; however, such a doctri-naire policy of bringing it to light is absolutelydistinct from the revolutionary principle of recover-ing national riches which, so the argument runs, haduntil then been denatured or despoiled.34

The representation of the past and thesocial imaginary: the Middle Ages

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vivid contemporaneity, was a phenomenon apt to beconsidered by Guizot. The Histoire de la Civilisation enFrance states that

its traditions, morals, adventures and monuments havean undeniable attraction for the public. One has only toconsider Literature and the arts; to read histories, novels,the poetry of our own time; or look at furniture andcuriosity dealers - everywhere one sees the Middle Agesexploited, reproduced, occupying thoughts, and amusingtaste.55

This popular predilection was prey to attempts atpartisan manipulation, attempts which were,however, formally condemned by Guizot. The hos-tility of 'sincere friends of science and progress ofhumanity' towards the feudal epoch, earned theadmiration of those who, on the contrary, sought init 'inspiration for despotism and privilege'. 'The pastso scorned, so abandoned by some, has become forothers the object of an idolatrous cult', and 'Utopiasin the past' had been created in response to those of'the masters of the future'.56 Here Guizot is criticiz-ing socialist Utopias and the reactionary fantasies ofan ideal, Catholic Middle Ages - manifesting a simul-taneously political and historical 'juste milieu'. Yet,all these efforts were in vain, for 'the masses aregoverned by simple, exclusive ideas and passions;there is no fear that they might ever judge the middleages and its social state too favourably'.57

In the same way that doctrinaire thinking 'forbaditself either a return to the maxims of the AncienRegime, or the adoption — however speculative —of revolutionary principles',58 its conception of theMiddle Ages avoided both the gloom of Voltaire'sversion or Sainte-Palaye's rose-tinted legend.59

Moreover, Guizot had no intention of sacrificing tothe sway of fashion, especially since his own tastewas hardly that way inclined (with the exception ofan early text, the Salon of 1810, which manifests a lik-ing for troubadour art and national subjects).

Only intellectual significance mattered in a periodwhich was identified as

the cradle of modern societies and customs. From this timedate (1) modern languages [. . .] (2) modern literature [. . .](3) most historical monuments in which, through thecenturies and still today, peoples gather together —churches, palaces, town halls, works of art and publicutility of all kinds (4) almost all historic families [. . .] (5) alarge number of national events, important for their ownsake and long popular [. . .] in a word almost everythingthat for centuries has preoccupied and excited theimagination of the French people.60

If the Enlightenment had misunderstood theMiddle Ages' importance, it was now time to restoreit to its proper place. Above all, unlike the eighteenthcentury, the nineteenth century understood 'theimportance of imagination's role in the life of manand society'. The mediaeval picture that Guizotgives — of feudal anarchy and the struggles of the

bourgeoisie - when compared to contemporarycivilisation, allowed recent, 'young' institutions(founded 'in the name of reason and philosophy'), tobe aligned with 'like principles glimpsed, guaranteessought across the centuries'. In short, the MiddleAges could help in establishing a government stillunable to draw on 'the power of memories'.

The need for this recourse to the past was all themore acute, according to Guizot, in that people hadbeen subjected to the 'overwhelming events' of theRevolution and Empire for too long not to considerthemselves impotent. Above all, 'moral reform',which lay behind the placidity of social life ('neverwas less public force needed to quell individualwishes'), ended up by enervating national character.Guizot enthused that the representation of mediae-val civilisation provided contemporary individuality,whose 'inner energy was weak and timid', with asalutary lesson, 'in showing us what a man can bewhen he knows how to believe and how to wish'.61

In this way, Guizot's initiative put a term to theuncertainty of the early nineteenth century, whenthe programme for the conservation of the past hadbeen clearly conceived and advocated, but withoutbeing fully carried through into action for the lack ofan appropriate perspective and norm of historicalappreciation. According to the report to the Aca-demie des Inscriptions drawn up in 1818 followingthe initiative of the comte de Laborde:

What has always been lacking in France is the recogni-tion of the importance of this kind of richness; a concernwith its conservation, and taking advantage of it in theinterests of education and national history.62

The administrative concept of an 'historicalmonument' was based on the ideas of modernarchaeology, whose precursors, such as Serouxd'Agincourt and Alexandre Lenoir, had providedthe outline.63 Unlike these two, however, Guizotgave a specific significance to the synthesis of thecatalogue with a chronological narrative — that ofhistory.

History considered as civilisation

Borrowing from the natural sciences, Guizot's idealwas to depict the exact physiognomy of the past byvirtue of a synthesis of 'anatomy, or the search forfacts', physiology, or 'the study of their organisa-tion', and finally, the 'reproduction of their form andmovement'.64 The opening pages of the Histoire de laCivilisation en Europe provide a carefully gradedrepertoire, from 'visible, material facts such asbattles, wars, the official acts of governments', tothose 'hidden, moral facts, which are no less real'.

There are individual facts which have a proper name andthere are general facts, to which it is impossible to assign aprecise date, or to confine within rigorous limits, butwhich are no less factual than the other, historical facts;


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one cannot exclude them from history without mutilatingit.65

Thus Guizot was concerned with the history of'the most important facts, those most sublime inthemselves, sublime independent of all exteriorconsequences, and purely in their relation to man'ssoul'; 'religious beliefs and philosophical ideas,sciences, letters, arts'.66 These remarks were relevantto the present, since the relation between the indi-vidual and society, or to 'the species', was at theheart of the division of historians into 'descriptive'and 'determinist'. Chateaubriand, while he con-demned the two schools and called for a new syn-thesis, indirectly paid homage to Guizot: 'the historyof humanity, of general society, of universal civilisa-tion, should not be masked by the history of socialindividuality'.67

The idea of civilisation — 'the general and defini-tive fact to which all the others lead, by which theyare summed up' — seems effectively to resolve thiscontradiction. Only the 'point of view of civilisation'allows the 'individual facts' to be considered histori-cally as part of 'progress, the development of socialactivity and individual activity'.68 Hence, their'importance grows and [their] sublimity increasesthrough their connection to civilisation'. 'There areeven occasions when the facts of which we speak . . .are often considered and judged from the point ofview of their influence on civilisation; an influencewhich becomes, up to a certain point and for acertain time, the decisive measure of their merit andvalue' (p. 60).

Guizot applied himself to healing the rupturebetween 'the exterior condition of man' and hismoral state, his 'inner nature'. On the fundamentalquestion of whether 'society is made to serve theindividual or the individual to serve society',69 theHistoire de la Civilisation en Europe concludes that anyanswer must be 'conjectural' and limits itself torepeating his friend Royer-Collard's profession offaith. On the other hand, it was the historian's respon-sibility to repeat that 'these two sides of civilisation areclosely linked to each other' (p. 69). More precisely,the Histoire de la Civilisation en France, which aimed togo beyond the earlier exclusive study of the socialstate, concluded by advocating a form of intellectual-ism. In France,

man and society have always advanced and grown . . .close together. [...] Nothing has happened in the realworld which is not immediately understood and used byintellect for its own end, creating a new richness.Nothing, in the domain of the intellect, has been withoutimmediate repercussions and consequences in the realworld. Even on a general plane, in France ideas havepreceded and provoked the progress of the social order;they were prepared as doctrines before finding form inthings, and the spirit has always been at the head of themarch of civilisation.70

From this historical method the conclusion followslogically:

study and science proceed, and must proceed, from theexterior to the interior. It is the exterior that is firstconfronted, and i,t is in studying this that it is possible toadvance, to penetrate and, by degree, to arrive at theinterior.

'In reality', on the contrary, 'facts develop, so tospeak, from the inside to the outside; causes areinternal and produce external effects'. The historiantherefore always begins 'by a study of the socialstate', knowing well that this 'derives from, amongstmany causes, the moral state of peoples': 'beliefs,feelings, ideas, customs, precede the external condi-tions, social relations, and political institutions.'71

An essay in philosophical archaeology

In this attempt to represent the past — which revealsthe interplay of external constraints and individualfreedom, of the spirit and society — the history of thearts, especially architecture, enjoys a particularlyprivileged position. We may turn here to the chapterin the Histoire de la Civilisation en France on 'thechateau in the feudal regime', which providedGuizot with the occasion for a methodological setpiece on the writing of'philosophical' archaeology.72

'The appalling anarchy' of the feudal centuries,wrote Guizot, 'above all after the death of Charle-magne', explains not only the profusion but also thepredominantly practical design of chateaux.

At this period, war was omnipresent; military architec-ture was thus necessarily ubiquitous. [...] It was not onlya question of building strong chateaux — all things wereconverted into fortifications, defensive quarters, strong-holds. [. . .] The land was covered with such buildings, allof a similar character.

This reconstruction of 'the material state of feudalbuildings' was not enough on its own. It not onlyprovided an introduction to the narrative, it gene-rated a series of fundamental historical questions:

What took place within? What life was led by the inhabi-tants? What wider influence could such a domicile andsuch material circumstances have? How and in whatdirection could the small society contained by thechateau develop, and what was the formative element offeudal society?

The prime characteristic of this type of building —its isolation — allows one to link the social state tointerior life. This would not have surprised theaudience of the Cours, for in his long treatment offeudality, Guizot wove endless variations around histheme. In addition to this central characteristic,Guizot identified the crucial role of an exceptionaldegree of leisure: in fact,

never has such leisure on the part of the inhabitants beenseen in common with such isolation. [. ..] The owner ofthe chateau thought only of leaving it. Shut up when


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necessary for his own security and independence, as oftenas possible he sought what was most lacking — societyand activity. The life of the owner of fiefs took place on thehighways, and in adventures.

Hitherto determined by general insecurity, habitatturned out to be in its turn the cause of troubles:

the long series of raids, pillages and wars which charac-terise the Middle Ages, was in large part the result of theform of feudal habitation, and of the material situation inwhich its masters were placed. Everywhere they soughtthe social activity that they could not find at home.

Hence the crusades, explained in the followinglapidary manner: 'they went further and for othercauses; therein lies the main difference'.

But Guizot's argument does not stop with thesocial state: 'the two characteristic traits' of feudalmentality ('the bizarre and savage energy manifest inindividuals' and 'the persistence of customs andtheir long resistance to change and progress'), areequally related to the chateau. For, 'the rampartsand ditches of chateaux were obstacles to ideas aswell as to enemies'. But,

at the same time, [. . .] they were in a certain respect aprinciple of civilisation. [. . .] Domestic life, the familyspirit, and particularly the condition of women, devel-oped in modern Europe much more completely andmore happily that anywhere else. [. . .] In no other form ofsociety was the family ever reduced to its simplest expres-sion — husband, wife and children, squashed andcrowded together, separated from any powerful rivalrelationship.

In short, 'it was in the chateaux that chivalry wasborn and grew up', which is to say, the moral condi-tion from which mediaeval society arose. In thisarchitecture, a whole civilisation is inscribed. Such aconception of archaeology requires the comprehen-sion of a monument as part of a social totality.Without this mode of analysis, 'history envelops andoverlays the history of civilisation' with an abun-dance of achievements and 'exterior scenes', to thepoint that it becomes impossible to make it appear ina given building.

The method of modern archaeology

The idea of turning to the method of intellectualinvestigation followed from this: if'statistics [are], incertain respects, one of the best means of studyingthe state of a [contemporary] society', Guizot asked,'why not apply them to the study of the past?' It wasa question of

presenting in tabular form the special facts of the periodwhich derive from the general facts and lead immediatelyto the history of civilisation. The procedure does notreproduce [the past] as living and animated, in the form

of a narrative; but it sets up a framework, and preventsgeneral ideas from floating in vagueness and chance.73

Statistics, which had always been increasinglyemployed 'as one advances along the course of civili-sation', were the tool capable of 'making the empireof facts prevail in the intellectual domain'.74 Not onlydid statistics dispense Guizot's course from having todeal with minutiae inappropriate to [spoken] de-livery, and excessively diverse ramifications, but theyalone allowed a recovery and reintegration of theantiquarian heritage into the heart of what had beenrelegated to the domain of philosophical history.70

In the same way, the general inventory conceivedin 1834 was intended to go beyond a panoramicreview of monuments of all ages and all places. If itwas to make up for earlier oblivion and ruin, such arecapitulation of the national past, had above all toaspire to identifying the principle of unity which,until then, had been dissimulated or misunder-stood: the meaning of civilisation.76 The classifica-tion of all the works ever built into a complex indexought to provide 'the register of the state and generalmovement of minds'77 as, in Guizot's course, thetotality of the books by someone such as Alcuindepicted the state of affairs under Charlemagne.

From a certain point of view, nevertheless, statis-tics were a last resort — an admission of helpless-ness. Certainly, the history of the arts 'has thisadvantage over general history, that it has at itsdisposal and can identify the objects themselveswhich it wants to understand and judge'. But,'seeing is not enough, we must understand'.78 Therichness of the material was itself of no advantage tothe historian, who was dealing less with manageableevidence than insoluble enigmas.

Knowledge of the period is necessary for theunderstanding of the works. 'How can one under-stand literary history without knowing the times andmen in the midst of which the relevant monumentsit were produced?' Yet this is not enough, since

these decisive traits which serve to explain the characterand conduct of peoples [. . .] do not reveal the secret of thecauses which determined the character of literatures.[. . .] the great events of history have only acted on litera-ture by unknown, indirect, almost intangible connec-tions. [. . .] One thus recognises the influence of theseinnumerable secondary causes whose nature and powerit is impossible to define, and sometimes even to confirmtheir existence.

In short, 'the historian who wants to uncover thedetermining causes of the character and of the direc-tion of modern literature [is] obliged to contenthimself with predominantly fragmentary glimpsesand disparate researches'.

This conclusion follows less from a protestation ofhumility than from a sense of the complexity ofmodern arts. In the Histoire de la Civilisation enEurope, Guizot judged them 'from the point of viewof form and beauty, very inferior' to those of Anti-

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quity; but 'from the point of view of the underlyingfeelings and ideas [. . .] stronger and richer'.79 Theirimperfection was the paradoxical fruit of 'the prodi-gious diversity of ideas and feelings of Europeancivilisation'.79 In comparison to ancient archaeology,solidly established on the 'symbolic unity' of itsmaterial, modern archaeology, adopting the proce-dure of its older partner, raised the challenges of amultiplying and dispersed corpus which includeduneven and failed monuments — reflections, none-theless, of a richer civilisation.

The legitimacy of a discipline

The canonical procedure of the archaeology of the'science of antiquity', as Raoul Rochette referred toit in his contemporary public courses on AncientHistory, had been directly imported to the field ofnational history.80 Hence the primacy of materialremains over other potential sources: 'The slightestdebris surviving from the ruins of antiquity teachesus something more', if we believe Raoul Rochette,'than all books.' For Guizot, too, architecture wasthe most revealing testimony of a civilisation. No lessdid he recognise the necessity of a 'series of variedmonuments from age to age in order to constitute aschool of art, [and] a succession of times and artistsin order to constitute history'. For classical archaeol-ogists, 'art and history' were recognizable 'in Anti-quity only among the Egyptians, the Etruscans andthe Greeks'.81 The modern age was itself witness to aprivileged nation: Guizot and his successors' affir-mation — repeated so often as to exhaust patriotism— of the chronological depth and the stylistic varietyof France's heritage can be explained in no otherway. Only a corpus of high quality monuments of auniversal dimension could legitimise nationalarchaeology as a resume of modern archaeology.

Finally, and above all, it was archaeologicalcommon practice to 'juxtapose monuments withpassages from the Ancients' in order to 'take advan-tage of the double knowledge of facts and monu-ments'.82 The creation of a chair of ComparativeLiterature for modern Europe in a sense satisfied thedemands of this procedure: as in the canonicalmethods of Classical archaeology, it allowed the'rapprochement of the finest monuments of art withthe finest literary monuments'. If one considers hisMemoires, moreover, Guizot granted a quite excep-tional historical status to the simultaneous appear-ance of these two modes of analysis of modernity.

'The intellectual movement which has honouredthe Restoration' was exemplified 'by the awakeningof a taste for France's ancient historical monumentsand the study of foreign literature'. If, 'certainmeasures had tried to halt the ruin of great works ofFrench art and to make the masterpieces of Euro-pean literature known to modern France', 'a fixedcentre and the reliable means for action were lack-ing'.83 Hence, ministerial concern was applied to

'these noble aspirations of human understanding',in order to give them the support of permanentinstitutions.' While Vitet had to 'pursue and popu-larise the restoration of France's ancient monu-ments', Fauriel set himself the task of 'spreading]knowledge and enthusiasm for the great literaryproductions of European genius'.84

This new concern for modern artistic productionis the underlying principle of both enterprises as itwas also for Guizot's Rapport of 1830: until Lenoir,who had 'prepared' minds, nobody 'had appre-ciated the importance' of monuments 'considered asworks of art'. Earlier centuries had only seen them as'the source of great historical understanding'. Thuswe see the historian adopting his approach from theart critic.

Conservation for the future

Yet the art critic only considered the work of art in sofar as it was representative of its period. Guizot wasextremely interested in dramatic art, for it embodied'the union of the arts with society'; he believed that anew use of the stage should correspond to a newsocial condition. As his disciple, Vitet, put it: 'taste inFrance awaits its 14th July'.85 At each historicalmoment, each artistic style implicitly becomes thesole authentic and rational means of responding tothe exigencies of society. Bad art was an erroneousform which went against the grain of civilisation,morality, and truth. Good art was in tune with theprogress and novelty which constituted the spirit ofthe time. In short, historicism was the underlyingprinciple — if not the very tool — of Guizot's con-ception of modern archaeology.

However, because of the range and diversity of itsinferences, the historicist position is notoriouslydifficult to define. If we follow Popper's definition —'the idea that the history of man has a plot, and that,if we succeeded in deciphering this plot, then wewould hold the key to the future'86 — and apply hisformulation to Guizot, we find that several charac-teristic features are brought together: a search formechanisms of change, a law of 'the progress ofsociety' and 'the progress of humanity', a relativismwhich recognised a whole period in each artisticform, and a belief that this was the reflection of aparticular society.87

The principle of conservation is linked to a didac-tic desire to know not only what has, but also whatwill and must be the architectural expression of aperiod. In a wider sense, it is linked to the frequentlyexpressed certainty that only the artist can conceivethe image — the memory — of his time and pass iton to posterity. On the occasion of a request for helpwith the 1848 Prix de Rome entries, David d'Angersgave a lucid formulation of this idea when he spokeof artists as 'the archivists of peoples, charged withpassing on to the future the glorious annals ofhumanity'.88 The sense of the passing of history,

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which is so striking in Guizot, transforms everywork, as soon as it is finished, into the future's inheri-tance.

In the context of the evolution of civilisation,contemporary architecture appeared as the heritagewhich would best represent the present to the future.The report by M. de Gasparin, president of theComite des Arts et Monuments, on 'the instructionsrelative to the conservation of monuments' (4 May1840), envisaged seven classes of monuments, thelast one being

monuments which do not yet exist and which are beingdesigned. Until the present, we have only taken intoaccount ancient monuments and past art; but the art andmonuments of the future must also concern the commit-tee. Numerous opinions are requested on this subject,and they must not be ignored. What, then, is the architec-tural style that France should adopt in its buildings?89

The conservation of the past thus formed part ofan intellectual strategy of the Nation-State.90 If anawareness of heritage was part of even the oldest,most general, mentality,91 here it is embodied in apublic need to organise monuments as evidence ofeach phase of historical development. Its moder-nity derived from a historicist mobilisation of theidea of heritage amongst all citizens.

At one and the same time a sursum corda and alesson in civism, the doctrine of conservation was asmuch a tool of government as an extension ofindividual morality. It made public the traditionalcare of the owner and, among men of ability,privatised the national imperative that was a legacyof 1789. In the image of a free government which had'as its intention and goal to search ceaselessly insociety, to bring to light the best [men] in all fields[. . .], to lead them to power and [. . .] to oblige themto merit this exposure',92 heritage was realisedthrough the tireless work of revealing the past to acountry which was more and more enlightened(opposing vandalism) and increasingly moral (refus-ing to indulge in 'Elginism').

The legacy of 'le moment Guizot'

Although it was later superseded by more demo-cratic values, Guizot's legacy was nonethelessfundamental. He established a national legitimacyfor conservation which was quite unlike either itscivic, sometimes iconoclastic, mobilisation, orscholarship's exclusive demands, often irrelevant tosociety. The former was powerful, but also deplor-able; the latter, however irreproachable, were no lessdisarmed before public opinion or power.

The Second Republic seemed to wish to abandonthe category of'historical monument' in the interestsof a more utilitarian definition of the nationalmonument, to be conserved because of its functionalvalue. As if on the defensive, the 1850 Rapportaffirmed that 'today, the efforts aimed at restoring

our ancient buildings are fully appreciated', whereas'not long ago they would have been considered as aform of study, or even as a form of amusement forarchaeologists'. It cast into doubt the justification forthe administrative definition inherited from Guizot:'buildings loosely defined by the name historicalmonument have a public destiny and an everydayutility. Putting aside a few Roman ruins — massivereminders of a people whose history is the basis forour educational system — which buildings are theseif not churches, town halls, palaces of justice?'93

Beyond this brief eclipse, however, the philosophy ofthe July Monarchy won the day, Viollet-le-Duc incertain respects carrying the banner of Guizot.94

The general attitude to conservation found underthe Third Republic was based on the free involve-ment of individual commitment and individualintellectual concerns, the state playing the role ofmoderator or last resort. On the occasion of theexamination of the Bardoux law in 1878, Courcelle-Seneuil recommended its implementation in favourof only

a small number of monuments or objects sufficientlyimportant that their significance be national, and not allthose which might interest the science of history andarchaeology. In the natural course of things, only thosemonuments which retain a usefulness are well lookedafter, that is, those which serve to satisfy the needs andpreferences of the present generation, and only higherinterest can authorise measures of 'artificial' conserva-tion. For the conservation of most monuments andobjects of secondary interest, we must count on the worksof enlightened people and societies; and on the progressof taste and the force of public opinion.

Above all, the idea that, beyond the confines ofantiquarianism, monumental conservation aimed tosafeguard the expression of national character — theincarnation of universal civilisation — becamecosubstantial with the discourse of heritage. In 1896,Louis Tetreau summarised the legitimacy of conser-vation as follows: 'the history of a country's origins,of its civilisation and its genius is written in its monu-ments. The preoccupation to conserve works of art,the witnesses of past times, thus corresponds to anational feeling.'95 In the opening lecture of a courseon history and national antiquities at the College deFrance on December 7 1906, Camille Jullian evenasserted that 'the ruins of monuments not onlymanifest the worker's hand and the architect's plan,but also the feelings of a people; they reflect, in part,the spirit of a generation of men, they betokenideas'.96

Pedagogical utility, which saw monumentalremains as a series of lessons to instruct inhabitantsand visitors, was, on the contrary, absent from thedoctrinaires' statements. By contrast, this consi-deration was important under the Third Republic;Pariset explained it invoking a sensualist psycho-logy:


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scattered across the whole surface of France, these monu-ments stimulate the highest feelings amongst those whohave gazed upon them from the days of their childhood.[. . .] In guaranteeing the upkeep of ancient monuments,we contribute to raising the moral and artistic level ofthose for whom these things constitute an introduction tobeauty or an evocation of patriotic greatness.9'

None of this can be found in Guizot, who did notdefine the legitimacy of conservation by its essen-tially democratic dimension.

The conservation of monuments is a fact of contem-porary civilisation, distinct from earlier practices. Itdraws on the learned and disinterested aims ofmodern archaeology, which first of all requires aninventory of sources. Central to this system of knowl-edge, modelled on the example of the science ofantiquity, the historical monument figures as a privi-leged go-between for the social and the individual.An 'external' expression, it provides an understand-ing of the 'internal'. Through this heuristic value,the discovery of a given civilisation proceeds —against the grain of its conception and its creation —from the imprint to the mould.

If we are to believe the ministerial statement of1834,

no study reveals to us more of the social state and authen-tic spirit of past generations than that of their religious,civil, public, and domestic monuments, or of the ideasand various rules which determined their construction —in a word, the study of all works of architecture, which isthe origin and summation of all the arts.

But Louis-Philippe's 'intellectual Prime Minister'98

deftly linked this evocation of the past to the admini-stration of public opinion, amply illustrated by theevidence of recent memory.

'Heritage' enlisted citizens' energies in favour ofthe culture of government: firstly, by showing thatpresent power formed part of a long progress, andsecondly, by reviving in its own interests a sense ofindividuality that had been weakened by recent cir-cumstances. It contributed to the struggle ofcontemporary minds against 'the two grave dangers[of contemporary civilisation]: pride and laziness'.The task of the Inspecteur des Monuments his-toriques, his institutional status and the absence of aprotective legislation, illustrate the sociological over-lap of power and public opinion. The administrationof heritage merged with the intellectual activity ofsociety itself. It was a manifestation of the 'doublegeneralisation' of power and society, 'equallypublic';99 yet it followed the principle correspondingto this state of civilisation — the 'sovereignty ofreason, of justice, and of the law', and in no wayconstituted an indiscriminate idolatry of the past.

At a time, when, to adopt Stanley Mellon's phrase,the political uses of history were common currency,and when polemics regarding the extent, responsi-bilities and consequences of revolutionary vandal-ism remain very much alive, Guizot the politician,who invented the administrative concern for heri-tage, was opposed to the idolatry of monuments, andmade quite certain that his position would not bemisconstrued in this way. While the political historyof'patrimoine francais' often seems to be made up ofthe taking of a succession of archaeological or monu-mental hostages, Guizot represents a unique figure,with his invocations of historical impartialityembodied in the programme for the 1834 generalinventory — the supreme antithesis of partisan,manipulative conservation.

Even his project for a museum at the palace ofVersailles, apparently inspired by the Societe desObservateurs de l'Homme, or at least their ideology,is singularly less political than the museum ofnational glories as conceived by Louis-Philippe.This is so much the case that one might ask ifGuizot's almost total disappearance from bothofficial and lay memories of heritage in favour ofrescuers such as Lenoir or administrators such asMerimee has not come about because of somedeficiency in the emotive, even existential resonanceof his conservational initiatives.

This leads us directly to the status given toarchaeology by Guizot. The question of Guizot'sformation and culture remains unresolved. Thebreadth of his intellectual ambition, which rangedacross something of everything, was not necessarilyequivalent to superficiality or mere indifference. But,as far as one knows, the young Guizot had estab-lished no more of a grasp of classical antiquarianismthan his contemporary Beranger when they colla-borated in working for Laurent's Musee bookshop.His approach to the field of monuments, understoodin a wide sense, was based on the classic separationbetween archaeological and antiquarian studies.Millin's Dictionnaire, published during the Empire,had similary distinguished between the archaeolo-gist, who dealt with works of art (and thereforeEgypt, Greece and Rome), and the antiquarian, whowas only interested in monuments in so far as theyilluminated customs and behaviour, using them asdocuments. The nineteenth century's innovation,noted Guizot, was to consider national monumentsas art and no longer as a 'source of great historicalknowledge', something that the seventeenth centuryhad already established.

Yet, in his teaching, Guizot clearly encounteredenormous difficulties in treating historical monu-ments as art. In fact, the only properly 'archaeologi-cal' analysis that he successfully applied is to befound in the Histoire de la Civilisation en France, in thechapter 'On the chateau under the feudal regime',discussed earlier. Here the monument provided anexcellent pretext for developing a scientific analysisof the social state both, as Guizot would put it, from


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the outside and from the inside. But this particularexemplary show piece was only possible because itwas a question of something that constituted a wholesocial monument, and not art in the normal sense ofthe word.

As soon as one gets into the Cours, proceedingalong the path of the history of civilisation, andmonuments and their creators become individua-lised, Guizot makes use of statistical tables in theform of an inventory. He proceeds as if the archaeo-logical method oscillated between the considerationof an archetypal monument — which might even bea synthetic, imaginary monument — and a straight-forward catalogue of the monuments belonging to areign of a period. What had appeared, in the Cours,as a facility of exposition which dispensed with anydevelopment requiring too much detail or breadthwhich might obscure the clarity of the argument, in1834 seems to have become elevated to the basic taskfor the history of the arts; to establish an index of allthe monuments which had existed on French soil.And, in fact, the undertaking was fundamental inthe legitimation of a national archaeology, for theexistence of a series, the documentation of a chain ofmonuments within a terrain, was regularly evokedas the basic requirement for an archaeologicalscience. Guizot's declarations regarding the impor-tance of the 'full, exhaustive series' of French histori-cal monuments — 'as numerous and more variedthan those of some neighbouring countries' — hadthis in view. The same is true of the relation betweencomparative European literatures and nationalarchaeology.

Guizot's national archaeology was based on themodel of antique archaeology — arguing around aseries, and the evolution of styles being referred tothat found in literature. The conservation of Frenchmonuments would allow the foundation of modernEuropean archaeology, the necessary pendant toantique archaeology, for it provided the exhaustivecatalogue of examples from all types and all periodsof European history. This was something new, andnot a continuation of earlier attitudes. As with allother human activities, it had to conform to thegoverning principles of contemporary civilisation,notably 'the legitimacy of motives and the utility ofthe results'. Such a form of conservation would beimpartial, since it was based on the progress ofscience and social utility, that is, it would mobilisethe citizen and collective energies — like the newhistory which had united simple narration, philoso-phical dissertation and practical function. Guizotwas the first to synthesise a respect for the art of pastepochs — through an understanding of the meaningof local colour, learned utility — the documentaryindex, and civic use — the mobilisation of able men.Such a formulation has proved to be remarkablysuccessful.

Translated by Richard Wrigley

Notes

1. Yves Aguilar, 'La Chartreuse de .Ylirande; le monument historiqueproduit d'un classement de classed Actes de la recherche en Sciences sociales,no. 42, 1982, pp. 76-85.

2. Marc Guillaume, La politique du patrimoine (Galilee, Paris, 1980).3. See Donald Home's Grand Tour, The Great Museum. The Represen-

tation of history (Pluto Press, London, 1984); and David Lowenthal, ThePast is a Foreign Country (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985).

4. For a survey and a bibliography, see Revue d'arche'ologie modeme etd'arche'ologie generate, no. 3, 1984-1985, Presses de l'Universite Paris-Sorbonne, and Claquemurer, pour ainsi dire, tout Vumvers: la mise en exposi-tion , directed by Jean Davallon (Editions du Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris, 1986).

5. See our article 'Naissance du musee', in Aux armes et aux arts! Lesarts de la Revolution francaise (Adam Biro, Paris, 1988).

6. Maurice Barres, Le grande pitie des eglises de France (Emile-Paul,Paris, 1914).

7. On the whole phenomenon see: Culture et Communication, no. 23,January 1980, and published separately, March 1980; Revue de I'art,December 1980, and Monuments historiques, no. 107, 1980; J. R. Gaboritand Ph. Durey, 'L'annee du patrimoine', Universalia 1981, pp. 442-3;and Des Chiffres pour le patnmoine (La Documentation francaise, Paris,1981). Jean Cuisenier in the catalogue of the great exhibition Hier pourDemain (Paris, 1980), and in Dialectiques, no. 30, 1980, pp. 63-7. Iattempted a preliminary assessment in 'L'avenir du passe', Le De'bat,no. 12, May 1981, pp. 105-15, as also has Jean-Pierre Rioux in 'L'emoipatrimonial', Le temps de la reflexion, VI, 1985, pp. 39-48.

8. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism. American Life in an ageof diminishing expectations (Norton, 1979); Felix Torres, Dejavu. Postelneo-modemisme: le retour du passe (Ramsay, Paris, 1986) provides a pressdossier of'heritage phenomena'.

9. Following the political change-around, the socialist programme issummarised in Max Querrien, Une nouvelle politique du patrimoine (LaDocumentation francaise, Paris, 1982), and the historical perspective inLes monuments historiques demain. Actes du colloque du ministere de la Culture(Picard, Paris, 1987). On a French speciality, heritage in the form of theecomuseum, see Actes des premieres rencontres nationales des ecomusees,Agence Regionale d'Ethnologie Rhone-Alpes, Ecomusee Nord-Dauphine, 1987.

10. Apart from Jean-Francois Lyotard's classic, La condition post-moderne (Minuit, Paris, 1979), see Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modem Architecture (Academy Editions, London, 1977), and What isPost-Modernism? (Academy Editions, London, 1986); Paolo Portoghesi,Dopo I'architettura moderna (Laterza, Rome-Bari, 1981). On the re-utilisation of heritage in general, see Alain Bourdin (ed.), Le patrimoinere'invente (P.U.F., Paris, 1984) and Jo Blatti (ed.), Past meets Present. Essaysabout historic interpretation and public audiences (Smithsonian InstitutionPress, Washington (D.C), 1987).

11. See Charles-Henri Pouthas, Guizot pendant le Restauration, prepara-tion de I'homme d'Etat (Paris, 1923; thesis), and his Lajeunesse de Guizot1787-1814 (Paris, 1936). On his historical work, see Stanley Mellon, Thepolitical uses of history, a study of historians in the French Restoration (StanfordUniversity Press, Stanford, 1958), and Sister Mar)' S. O'Connor, TheHistorical Thought of Francois Guizot (The Catholic University ofAmerican Press, Washington, 1955).

12. Cf. R. Huber and R. Rieth, Glossanum artts: le monument historique(Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tubingen, 1981), bibliography, pp. 201-38. Forthe 19th century, E. Vinet, Bibliographic methodique et raisonne'e des beaux-arts (Paris, 1874). See also the brilliant reflections of Jacques Le Coffin'Documento/Monumento', Enciclopedia (Einaudi, 1978), vol. V, pp. 38-48.

13. Cf. Marcel Gauchet, 'Les Lettres sur l'histoire de Franced'Augustin Thierry', Les lieux de me'moire (ed. Pierre Nora), La Motion(Gallimard, Paris, 1986), 3 vols., vol. 1, pp. 247-8.

14. Cf. Louis Reau, Histoire du vandalisme. Les monuments detruits de I'artfrancais (Hachette, Paris, 1959), 2 vols.

15. Alois Riegl, Le culte modeme des monuments. Son essence et sa genese([1903]Seuil, Paris, 1984).

16. Pierre Chaunu, La France. Histoire de la sensibilite des Francais a laFrance (Robert Laffont, Paris, 1982), p. 341.

17. Solidly based on the 'Archives du musee des monuments

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francais', in vol. 1 of the Inventaire general des nchesses d'art en France (Paris.

1883). Louis Courajod, in Alexandre Lenoir, son journal et le Muse'e des monu-

ments franfais (1878—1886), 3 vols., vigorously attacked the Revolution'srecord on patrimoine, while respecting Lenoir as a sort of national hero.By contrast, Louis Dimier denounced the celebrity of the conservator infive articles in Chroniques des arts, 25 March 1899-31 March 1900, 'Lesimpostures de Lenoir, examen de plusieurs opinions revues sur la foi decet auteur, concernant plusieurs points de l'histoire des arts'. Cf. HenriZerner, 'Introduction', in Louis Dimier, L'art francais (Hermann, Paris,1965), pp. 9-25, and Dominique Poulot, 'Alexandre Lenoir et lesmusees des monuments francais', Les lieux de memoire, op. cit., vol. 2,pp. 497-532.

18. 'Sur ces livres [de pierre] on trouve ce qu'Augustin Thierryappelle l'ame de l'histoire: et ces livres, nous n'avons appris a les lire quepar lui et par les grands fondateurs de 1'ecole historique du XIXe siecle.'Rapport fait au nom de la Commission chargee d'examiner U projet de lot [. . .] ,

by Antonin Proust (Paris, 1887), Chambre des deputes, no. 1501, and inRecueil des pieces relatives a la conservation des monuments [. . .], a volume of

18 mixed items, 1849-1888 Bibliotheque nationale, Paris, Fol. Lf242212, piece no. 13. For an appropriate contextualisation see N. Green,'"All the Flowers of the Field": the state, liberalism and art in Franceunder the early Third Republic', Oxford Art Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 1987,pp. 71-84.

19. The theme of an 'insufficiently French' Guizot is well describedby Laurent Theis, 'Guizot et les institutions de memoire', in Les lieux dememoire, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 590, and by Maurice Agulhon in his compterendu of the Actes du colloque Francois Guizot (Societe d'Histoire duProtestantisme francais, Paris, 1976), in Annales E.S.C., 33rd year, 4,1978, p. 840: 'Guizot appeared as the man who did not understand, ordid not "feel" nationality, or, to put it better, French sensibilty. In spirit[he was] a Genevan and/or an Englishman of a sort.' In fact, one of thepamphlets of 1830 opens with this portrait of a foreigner: 'Thirty millionFrench people had to submit to his doctrines [. . .] Whether it was theargument of an Ancillon, or a Gibbon, or some other author, throughthe principles of another century, or the principles of another people,what does it matter. . . .' (Francois Grille, 'Manque de foi de M. Guizot'manuscript, 83-folios, in-8°, Bibliotheque municipale, Angers, fo 5 and9.) Cf. Pierre Benichou, Le sacre de I'ecrivain (Jose Corti, Paris, 1973),p. 221: by virtue of his links with the pastor Ancillon referred to here,Guizot was one of the heralds of philosophical and literary Germanic-ism, while Gibbon represents his English inspiration.

20. The formula is borrowed from Mona Ozouf s characterisation ofthe aim of the Academie celtique in 'L'invention de l'ethnographiefranchise: le questionnaire del'Academie Celtique', Annales E.S.C., 36thyear, 2, March-April 1981, republished in L'e'cole de la France (Galli-mard, Paris, 1984), p. 377. Ch. H. Poutas has strongly emphasised thelink between the Ideologues and Guizot.

21. A 'great ethnographic museum which will gather together themonuments and debris of customs, civil and military life firstly of Francebut also of all the nations of the world' (Memoires pour servir a l'histoire demon temps [Paris, 1859], vol. 2, p. 69). In addition to the above note, seeEdna Lemay '.Naissance de l'anthropologie sociale en France' (onDemeunier], Dix-huitieme siecle (Gamier, Paris, 1970), no. 2, pp. 147-60,and the synthesis by Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Versailles: de la residenceroyale au muse'e historique (Albin Michel, Paris, 1984).

22. This negative image is repeated in the Congres arche'ologique deFrance, 1934, XCVIIe session, Paris, 2 vols., notably by Paul Leon, 'Lesprincipes de la conservation des monuments historiques. Evolution desdoctrines', 1, pp. 17-52; Paul Verdier, 'Le service des monumentshistoriques, son histoire, organisation, administration, legislation (1830—1934)', 1, pp. 53-246.

23. Pierre Marc de Biasi, 'Systeme et deviances de la collection al'epoque romantique', Romantisme, no. 27, 1980, pp. 77-93.

24. Bernard Deloche, Museologica-Contradictions el logique du muse'e

(Paris-Lyon, Vrin diffusion, 1985).25. As in the words of the hero-narrator in Jacques Laurent's Les sous-

ensembles flous (republished Hachette, Collection Le Livre de Poche,Paris, 1981), p. 44.

26. In this respect, the monument of scholarly piety is XavierCharmes' Le Comite des travaux historiques et scientijiques (Paris, 1886),3 vols.

27. Charles Olivier Carbonell, 'Guizot, homme d'Etat, et le mouve-ment historiographique francais du XIXe siecle', in Actes du colloque

Francois Guizot (Paris, 22-25 October 1974) (Societe de 1'Histoire duProtestantisme francais, Paris, 1976), p. 221.

28. Salomon Reinach, 'Esquisse d'une histoire de l'archeologiegauloise', Revue celtique, vol. 19, 1897, p. 297; Frederic Rucker, Lesongines de la conservation des monuments historiques en France (/ 790—1830)

(Paris, 1913), pp. 203-12; Jean Hubert, 'L'archeologie medievale', inL'Histoire et ses methodes, directed by Charles Samaran (Gallimard, Paris,1961), p. 290; Francoise Ben;e, Les premiers travaux de la CommissionSupeneure des Monuments historiques (Picard, Paris, 1979).

29. Pierre Rosanvallon, 'Pour une histoire conceptuelle du politique',Revue de synthise, 4th series, nos. 1-2, 1986, pp. 93-105.

30. i e passe change avec le present'; 'tout change dans l'homme etautour de lui [. . .] le point de vue d'oii il considere les faits et les disposi-tions qu'il apporte dans cet examen.' Francois Guizot, Histoire des onginesdu gouvernement representatif en Europe (Didier, Paris, 1855), vol. 1, 1stlesson of 1st year, p. 2.

31. 'selon leur etat politique et leur degre de civilisation, les peuplesconsiderent l'histoire sous tel ou tel aspect, et y cherchent tel ou tel genred'interet.' Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 6—10.

32. 'premier age des societes' . . . narrations brillantes et na'ives quicharment une curiosite avide et facile a satisfaire', . . . ie temps deslumieres, de la richesse et du loisir'. . . . 'des instructions analogues auxbesoins qu'on eprouve, a la vie dont on vit';. . . 'par une rare concours decirconstances, tous ces gouts, tous ces besoins semblent se reunir etl'histoire est maintenant parmi nous susceptible de tous ces genresd'interet'.. . . 'idee superieure qui marche la premiere et domine partoutou se porte l'esprit humain: la justice egale, universelle.' Op. cit., vol. 1,p. 13.

33. 'n'emporte ni I'approbation, ni le silence sur ce qui est faux,coupable ou funeste. [. . .] Le temps n'a pas recu la mission impie deconsacrer le mal ou l'erreur. II les devoile au contraire et les use.'. . . 'peude gens le pensent peut-etre, mais l'impartialite, qui est le devoir de tousles temps, est, a mon avis, la vocation du notre; non, cette impartialitefroide et sterile qui nait de l'indifference, mais cette impartialiteenergique et feconde qu'inspirent I'araour et la vue de la verite.' . . .[historical intelligence] 'a cesse d'etre le patrimoine des erudits' . . . 'sontdevenus capables de comprendre l'homme a tous les degres de la civili-sation' . . . 'son utilite n'est plus, comme jadis, une idee generale, unesorte de dogme litteraire et moral, professe par les ecrivains plutotqu'adopte et pratique par le public. Maintenant c'est une necessite pourle citoyen qui veut prendre part aux affaires de son pays, ou seulementbien juger.' [. . .] 'decouvrir la verite, la realiser au-dehors, dans les faitsexterieurs, au profit de la societe; la faire tourner, au dedans de nous, encroyances capables de nous inspirer Ie desinteressement et l'energiemorale qui sont la force et la dignite de l'homme dans ce monde.'Francois Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en France depuis la chute de I'Empireromain jusqu'en 1789 (Didier, Paris, 11th edition 1869), p. 30: hereafterHCF.

34. Cf. Philippe Raynaud, 'Le liberalisme francais a l'epreuve dupouvoir', in Nouvelle histoire des idees politiques, directed by Pascal Ory(Hachette, Paris, 1987), p. 172,"bn i'anthropologie pessimiste'.

35. Cf. Jean Mallion, Victor Hugo et Vart architectural (P.U.F., Paris,1962); Roland Mortier, La poetique des mines en France (Droz, Geneva,1974); II Revival, directed by C. G. Argan (Mazzota, Milan, 1974). Alsosee the remarks quoted in j . Mallion, Prosper Menme'e et les monuments duDauphine (Editions des Cahiers de l'Alpe, Grenoble, 1979); F. Berce,'Arcisse de Caumont et les societes savantes', Les lieux de memoire. II LaNation, vol. 2, p. 543 (Grille de Beuzelin); and Achillejubinal's report ont h e Bulletin monumental in t h e Journal de I'Institut historique, vol . I I , 5 t h

livraison, pp. 241-2.

36. 'Maintenant, il faut que la politique soit vraie, c'est-a-direnationale.' Francois Guizot, De la peine de mort en matierepolitique (1822)(Fayard, 'Corpus des Philosophes francais', Paris, 1984).

37. ia verite poetique [a] l'histoire philosophique comme etude del'organisation generale et progressive des faits.' HCF, vol. 1, I lth lesson,pp. 313-15.

38. Arnaldo Momigliano, 'Ancient History and the Antiquarian',Journal of the Warburg and Courlauld Institutes, vol. 13, 1950, pp. 285-315(see the French translation in Problemes d'hisloriographie ancienneet moderne[Gallimard, Paris, 1983], p. 247 on the fundamental distinction, andp. 283 on the early nineteenth-century doubts 'concerning the possibilityof unifying historical and antiquarian studies', one of the final phasesdistinguishing the 'becoming' from the 'becoming/being'.

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39. 'maintenir a la fois la rigueur de la methode scientifique et lelegitime empire de ['intelligence'. HCF, vol.1, pp. 33-5; see alsopp. 313-15.

40. 'd'enseigner le passe non seulement a la memoire mais a l'intelli-gence'. Avertisssement de l'Editeur' (1839) in Francois Guizot, Histoiredela civilisation en Europe depuis la chute de VEmpire romainjusque 'a la Revolution

francaise, ed. Pierre Rosenvallon (Hachette, Collection Pluriel, Paris,1985), p. 41 (hereafter (HCE).

41. 'cette fievre qui saisit quelquefois les peuples au milieu des plusutiles, des plus glorieuses regenerations'. . . . 'les peuples peuvent unmoment, sous l'empire d'une crise violente, renier leur passe le maudirememe; ils ne sauraient l'oublier, ni s'en detacher longtemps et absolu-ment'. Histoire des origmes du gouvernement. . . , op. at., vol. 1, p. 10.

42. 'toutes les generations ont besoin d'assister("aux faits generaux")pour comprendre le passe et pour se comprendre elles-memes.' HCE,pp. 258-9.

43. 'la legitimite des motifs et Putilite des resultats', HCF, vol. 1, p. 30.On this subject see Douglas Johnson, Guizot: aspects of French History1787-1874 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963), pp. 283-8, andpp. 330-2.

44. On these themes see Stephen Bann, The Clothing of Clio: a study ofthe representation of history in nineteenth-century Britain and France (Cam-

bridge University Press, 1984) (letter from Guizot to Barante, HJune1823, regarding Walter Scott, A.N. quoted p. 23; Scott imagined a typerather than an individual). In the chapter 'Du chateau feodal' in HCF,Guizot also quotes a contemporary novel in support of his argument,equivalent to a contemporary source.

45. HCF, vol. 2, 17th lesson, pp. 28-9.46. HCF, vol. 3, 11th lesson, pp. 271-2. In particular, he noted — as

had Constant — that 'power has left families' (cf. Pierre Rosenvallon, Lemoment Guizot (Gallimard, Paris, 1985), p. 39, which evokes a 'deperson-nification sociale', and Benjamin Constant, De la libertechez les modernesed. Marcel Gauchet (Hachette, Colletion Pluriel, Paris, 1980),pp. 483-4.

47. Francois Guizot, Des moyens de gouvernement et d'opposition dans Vitalactuel de la France (1821) in Les liberaux, extracts presented by PierreManent (Hachette, Collection Pluriel, Paris, 1986), vol. 2, p. 158.

48. 'lois savantes qui ont confiance dans la moralite, dans la raisondes individus, et qui laissent tout ce qui est purement moral dans ledomaine de la liberte.' On the doctrinaires' legislation, see P. Rosan-vallon, Le moment Guizot, op. cit., pp. 41-5.

49. 'se mettre en rapports directs avec les autorites et les personnesqui s'occupent de recherches relatives a l'histoire de chaque localite,[dj'eclairer les proprietaires et les deteneurs sur l'interet des edifices dontla conservation depend de leurs soins, et [de] stimuler, enfin, en ledirigeant, le zele de tous les conseils de departement et de municipalityde maniere a ce qu'aucun monument d'un merite incontestable neperisse par cause d'ignorance et de precipitation, et sans que lesautorites competentes aient tente tous les efforts convenables pourassurer leur preservation et de maniere aussi a ce que la bonne volontedes autorites ou des particuliers ne s'epuise pas sur des objets indignesde leurs soins.' The Rapport has had numerous re-editions and is alsopublished as an annexe to Guizot's Me'moires.

50. 'esprits les plus difficiles la conscience de la necessite ou legouvernement se trouve de veiller activement aux interets de l'art et del'histoire. [II] regularise les bonnes intentions manifestoes sur presquetous les points de la France,' [a l'image d'un Etat] 'centre d'impulsion etde coordination d'un assez large reseau d'influences et de lumieresrelativementautonomes'. Guizot described the 'double history' of civilis-ing centralisation followed by a 'suitably distributed' decentralisation inL'Histoire du gouvernement representatif . . . . v o l . 1, p . 5 9 . T o t h e i d y l l i cvision of Benjamin Constant, who thought it necessary to 'attach men tothe places aroused memories and habits', Guizot contrasted a differentview: 'Once the hand of power is lifted for a moment, local patriotismstirs once again as if from its own ashes. The magistrates of the smallestcommunes are proud to embellish them. Old monuments are carefullylooked after. In almost every village, there is a learned man who is happyto recount the rustic annals and who is listened to with respect . . .'(Reflexions sur les constitutions, 1814, ed. Plancher, vol. 1, p. 205, Paris.1818-1820)). Cf. the comments by Rosenvallon, p. 63.

51. 'allier la hauteur et la consequence rationelle du philosophe avecla flexibilite d'esprit et de bons sens du praticien'. HCF. vol. 2, 28thlesson, 'Hincmar, savie, ses ecrits', p. 351.

52. 'il faut ramener la vie [en les] rattachant au present [dans ces]entrepots de marchandises passees de mode et sans consommateurs'.Louis Vitet has visited the departments of the Oise, Aisne, Marne, Nord,and Pas-de-Calais. See G. K. Barnett, Histoire des bibliothequespubliques enFrance de 1789 a nos jours (Promodis, Paris, 1987), p. 93.

53. On the importance of this concept, see above all Boris Reizov,L'Historiographie romantique francaise 1815-1830 (Foreign languageeditions, Moscow, n.d.); Guizot's historicism — as that of Saint-Simon— is based on this notion, and the capacity of governing the future (cf.infra); 'it is only by virtue of the historical process that it is possible toformulate an historical prediction. [. . .] In establishing the direction thatthe development of society will follow, and in 'freely' submitting tohistorical necessity, one can make one's work useful [. . .] [Saint-Simon]understood the 'force des choses' as well as the doctrinaires: this is not ablind destiny, but a supreme law, that is the result of the nature of menand of society' (p. 771).

54. See our article, 'Naissance du monument historique', Revued'histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 32, 1985, 'Histoire et historiens',pp. 418-50.

55. 'ses traditions, ses moeurs, ses aventures, ses monuments ont pourle public un attrait qu'on ne saurait meconnaitre. On peut ouvrir leshistoires, les romans, les poesies de notre temps; on peut entrer chez lesmarchands de meubles, de curiosites; partout on verra le Moyen Ageexploite, reproduit, occupant la pensee, amusant le gout'. HCF, vol. 3,pp. 11-12.

56. 'Ici comme partout, l'impietq a provoque la superstition'. 'Lepasse si meprise, si abandonne des uns, est devenu pour les autres I'objetd'un culte idolatre'. Cf. the remarks by Pierre Michel, Un Mylheromantique: les Barbares 1789-1848 (Presses universitaires de Lyon, Lyon,1981), 'Independance barbare et civilisation moderne; Guizot',pp. 131-42.

57. 'les masses sont gouvernees par des idees et des passions simples,exclusives; il n'y a pas a craindre qu'elles jugent jamais trop favorable-ment le moyen age et son etat social', HCF, t. 3, 1st lesson, p. 13.

58. 'se defend a la fois du retour aux maximes de l'Ancien Regime, etde 1'adhesion, meme speculative, aux principes revolutionnaires,' PierreRosanvallon, 'Guizot et la revolution francaise', in Dictionnaire critique dela Revolution francaise, directed by Francois Furet and Mona Ozouf(Flammarion, Paris, 1988).

59. Cf. Ludovico Gatto, Medioevo voltairiano (Bulzoni, coll. Ipotesi,Rome), 2nd edition, 1973, and Lionel Gossman, Medievalism and theIdeologies of the Enlightenment: the world and work of La Curne de Sainte-

Palaye (The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1968), who recognises thegenealogy: 'Guizot drew up a plan for the publication of the chroniclesources of medieval French history — a plan which had already beenworked out and put forward in the eighteenth century by members ofthe Academie des Inscriptions and of which Dacier's editions of Froissartwas to have been the first fruit.' (p. 355) P. Trahard has also demon-strated Prosper Merimee's debt, especially in La Jacquerie, to Sainte-Palaye (La Jeunesse de Prosper Merimee, Champion, Paris, 1925),pp. 303-20.

60. 'le berceau des societes et des moeurs modernes. De la datent eneffet (1) les langues modernes [. . .] (2) les litteratures modernes [. . .] (3)la plupart des monuments modernes, des monuments ou se sontrassembles pendant des siecles et se rassemblent encore les peuples,eglises, palais, hotels de ville, ouvrages d'art et d'utilite publique de toutgenre (4) presque toutes les families historiques [. . .] (5) un grandnombre d'evenemems nationaux, importants en eux-memes etlongtemps populaires [. . .] en un mot presque toutce qui a preoccupeetagite pendant des siecles l'imaginaire du peuple francais.' HCF, vol. 3,1st lesson, p. 15.

61. HCF, vol. 3. 1st lesson, p. 24.62. 'Ce qui a toujours manque a la France, c'est d'attacher a cette

sorte de richesses I'importance qu'elle merite, de veiller a sa conserva-tion, et de chercher, sous le rapport de l'instruction et de l'histoirenationale, a en tirer parti.' Quoted by Laurent Theis, op. at.. p. 574; onthe Academie's work, see Charles-Olivier Carbonell, L'Autre Champol-lion. Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac (1778-1867) (Presses de l'Institutd'etudes politiques de Toulouse et l'Asiateque. 1982).

63. Cf. Angela Cipriani. 'Una proposta per Seroux d'Agincourt: lastoria delPArchitettura', Storia dell'arte, no. 11. 1971, pp. 211-25.

64. HCF, vol. 1, 1 lth lesson, pp. 313-15.65. 'II y a des faits individuels qui ont un nom propre; il y a des faits

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generaux, auxquels il est impossible d'assigner une date precise, qu'il estimpossible derenferner dans des limitesrigoureuses, etqui n'en sont pasmoins des faits comme d'autres, des faits historiques, qu'on ne peutexclure de l'histoire sans la mutiler.' HCE, pp. 57-8.

66. 'faits les plus importants, les plus sublimes en eux-memes,sublimes independamment de tout resultat exterieur, et uniquement,dans leurs rapports avec 1'ame de I'homme [que sontj les croyancesreligieuses et les idees philosophiques, les sciences, les lettres, les arts.'Ibid.

67. 'l'histoire de l'humanite, de la societe generale, de la civilisationuniverselle, ne doit pas etre masquee par l'histoire de l'individualitesociale.' Preface to Etudes ou discours historiques (1831).

68. HCE, p. 64. Cf. the Editor's notice in ibid.: 'to rediscover and todepict the fate and the achievements, the victories, and the other side ofsociety and the human soul, using proper names and particular events.'

69. 'II y a meme des occasions, ou les faits dont nous parlons [. . .]sont souvent consideres et juges sous le point de vue de leur influence surla civilisation; influence qui devient, jusqu'a un certain temps, la mesuredecisive de leur merite et de leur valeur.' This question does not arise forGuizot the historian. Thus, for example, in his discussion of'Des causesde la chute des Merovingiens et des Carolingiens' (Essais sur l'histoire deFrance, vol. 3, Paris, 1823): 'Hence, the event grows as it is consideredmore closely and as one relates it to more and more general causes. Thestruggle of two individual interests first becomes that of two politicalinstitutions, then that of two social forces; and, to the degree that thehistorian's gaze has penetrated his facts, there appears society itself, thenation, the country, and not merely proper names which in themselvesexplain nothing.'

70. Thomme et la societe ont toujours marche et grandi [. . .] a peu dedistance Tun de 1'autre. [. . .] Rien ne s'est passe dans le monde reel,dont l'intelligence ne se soit a l'instant saisie et n'ait tire pour son proprecompte une nouvelle richesse. Rien, dans le domaine de l'intelligence,qui n'ait eu dans le monde reel, et presque toujours assez vite, sonretentissement et son resultat. En general meme, les idees en France ontprecede et provoque les progres de l'ordre social: ils se sont preparesdans les doctrines avant de s'accomplir dans les choses, et l'esprit amarche le premier dans la route de la civilisation,' HCF, vol. 1, 1stlesson. Then comes politics: 'in France, the progress of social equalityand the knowledge of civilisation have preceded political freedom; it willtherefore be fuller and purer' ('Resume' of the Essais sur l'histoire deFrance, 1823). Equally similar to Saint-Simon: 'public opinion, thedominant system of concepts in all domains of social life, organises theperiod, subsumes individual activity and leads history in a routepredetermined by circumstances. It is more important for the historianto understand the history of ideas than the history of events, for theleading role belongs to ideas' (B. Reizov, p. 773). Amongst otherexamples, one could refer here to the following explanation given inGuizot's Me'moires for the failure of attempted reform of the universitiesin 1815: 'Reform . . . came too soon; for it was the result, both systematicand incomplete, of the thinking of several men who long had beenpreoccupied by the faults of the university system, and not the fruit of themomentum from an authentic public opinion' (edition edited andabridged by Michel Richard [Robert Laffont, Paris, 1971], p. 33.)

71. HCF, vol. 1, 2nd lesson, pp. 33—5. On the contrary, in hisMcmoins, Guizot poked fun at the qitarante-huitards'% illusion thai theycould 'embed the fundamental principles of the social order into mindsby widely distributed small works'; it is not for science to suppress theanarchy of people's souls, nor to recall the wayward masses to goodsense and virtue' (ed. M. Richard, op. cit., p. 231).

72. HCF, vol. 3, pp. 112-35.73. HCF, vol.2, p. 120. On the use of set pieces (tableaux) in the narra-

tive, HCF, vol. 2, pp. 141-2 and 335; on the great man, HCF, vol. 2,p. 116. The interest in historical statistics was keen at this period,particularly in Germany; see Georg Iggers, 'L'Universite de Gottingen,1760-1800: la transformation des etudes historiques', Francia, vol.9,1981, pp. 602-21 ('Statistics presuppose the existence of an administra-tive state which refuses to see a clear line of demarcation between thestate and society', p. 616). Two French translations of L. Goldsmith'sStatistique raisonnie de la France in 1833 and 1834. The work was dedicatedto Villele, who had commissioned the author. In the introduction, thetranslator, Eugene Henrion, sketched a brief history of statistics. SeeJean Walch, Les maitres de l'histoire 1815-1850 (Champion-Slatkine,Paris-Geneva, 1986), p. 272.

74. HCF, vol. 1, pp. 24-5.75. For a stimulating presentation of this, see Hayden V. White,

Metahistory (The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore), pp. 64—9.76. According to the Rapport au Roi sur I'e'tat des travaux relaiijs a la publi-

cation de documents ine'dits concemant l'histoire de France (2 December 1835):

'When one moves from the sciences and literature to deal with the arts,one must necessarily change one's method. For it is no longer a questionof discovering and publishing new work. Putting aside a few specialisedtreatises, the history of the arts is not to be found in books; it is written inthe monuments themselves, whose forms, varying according to time andplace, represent not only the principles and rules followed by differentschools, but, above all, the spirit, the ideas, the knowledge whichbelonged to their centuries. (In X. Charmes, op. at., vol. 2, pp. 46-7.)

77. Barante considered dividing the history of France into differentsections 'in order to make the general idea soar above the spectacle ofevents' (B. Reizov, op. cit., p. 225).

78. Francois Guizot, Corneille et son temps. Etudes litteraires (Didier,Paris, 1880 (1852]), p. 1. On the debt to Madame de Stael, see DouglasJohnson, op. cit., p. 335, and Dirk Hoeges's thesis (copy in Bibliothequenationale, Paris), Francois Guizot und die franzosische revolution (Bonn,1973). Guizot himself wrote: 'The Journal des De'bats, an association ofjudicious restorers of seventeenth-century ideas and literary tastes;M. de Chateaubriand, that brilliant and sympathetic interpreter of themoral and intellectual perplexities of the nineteenth century; Mme deStael, that noble echo of the generous sentiments and fine hopes of theeighteenth century — these are the three influences, the three forceswhich, under the Empire, truly acted on our literature and left theirmark on history.' (1852 Preface to Corneille et son temps. Etudes litteraires,p. xii.).

79. HCE, p. 77.80. For a contextualisation, and a bibliography, see our 'Musee et

societe dans l'Europe moderne', Melanges de I'Ecole francaise de Rome:Moyen Age et Temps Modemes, vol. 98, 1986, pp. 991-1096.

81. Raoul Rochette, Corns d'Architecture . . . (Paris, n.d. [1828]), 2ndlesson, p. 38. On the final 'dispute' with Viollet-le-Duc, see BrunoFoucart, Viollet-le-Duc, Galeries nationalux du Grand Palais, 19Feb-ruary-5 Mary 1980 (Editions de la Reunion des Musees nationaux,Paris, 1980), p. 181 IT.

82. Cf. the letter from A. L. Millin to Champollion-Figeac, 5Messidor, Year X, quoted in Ch. O. Carbonell, L'autre Champollion, op.cit., p. 27.

83. Me'moires (Paris, 1859), vol. 2, pp. 66—9, and the remarks byP. Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, op. cit., pp. 194—203. Guizot laterreturned to this subject in relation to the powers of the Ministere del'lnstruction publique: 'arts and literature have natural, necessary links;it is only by this intimate and continuing interchange that they areassured of keeping their own great characteristic, that is, the cult ofbeauty and its maintenance amongst men. [. . .] Placed beyond thesphere of literature (...) the arts run a great risk of falling under the yoke,either of the mere material utility, or the public's most trivial fantasies'(Me'moires, ed. M. Richard, p. 202).

84. Here the importance of the transformation of national literature,which likewise became an 'historical monument', can only be signalled,but cf. Michel Charles, 'La lecture critique', Poetique, vol.34, 1978,pp. 129-51: 'By a pedagogical and historian's route, one thus discoversthat we do not know our own language.' Also, D. Grojnowski, 'Nais-sance de l'explication francaise', Textuel, no. 20, 1987, pp. 55-62, andtwo articles in Histoire de /'Education, no. 33, 1987; Andre Chervel,'Observations sur l'histoire de l'enseignement de la compostion fran-caise', pp. 21-34, and Pierre Albertini, 'L'histoire litteraire au lyceereperes chronologiques', pp. 35-46. Vitet, a man of letters, journalist,playwright of historical dramas, was the first Inspecteurdes Monumentshistoriques, before he pursued a career in politics. He was an excellentinterpreter of a literary movement which was linked to political ambi-tions; we find in him a manifestation of the historicist character ofcontemporary aesthetic thought.

Much older than the generation under discussion, Fauriel representsthe intellectuals of the 'Second Enlightenment', and the Ideologies of theDirectoire and the Empire. A scholar with wide interests, thenconcerned himself with modern literature, especially that of Greece.

85. Cf. P. Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot, op. cit., pp. 200-1; PierreBenichou, op. cit., pp. 303—17.

86. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London, 1977); Raymond


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Boudon and Francois Bourricaud, Dictionnaue critique de la socwlogie(P.U.F., Paris, 1982), article on 'Historicisme', pp. 267-74, and Popper'sintellectual autobiography, Unended Quest, an Intellectual Biography(Fontana, 1976).

87. I use here the criteria proposed by Popper in The Open Society andits Enemies, II, Hegel and Marx (. . .). For an analysis of historicism inarchitecture, see D. Watkin, Morality and Architecture.

88. David d'Angers, partially published in L'Artiste, 5th series, vol. 1,August 1848, p. 224.1 would like to thank Marie-Claude Chaudonneretfor kindly drawing this text to my attention.

89. In X. Charmes, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 575.90. In his 23 July 1834 circular to the members of'societes savantes',

Guizot wrote that: 'at a time when popular education is spreading every-where, and when the efforts to this end create an energetic activity ofmind amongst the numerous classes devoted to manual work, it isimportant that many of the leisured classes, who occupy themselves withintellectual work, do not allow themselves to become indifferent andapathetic' (quoted in X. Charmes, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 309).

91. Denise Delouche, 'Le role de la noblesse francaise dans la nais-sance de l'archeologie aux XVIIIe and XIX siecles', in Noblesse francaise,noblesse hongroise, XVle-XIXe siicle (C.N.R.S., Paris and Budapest, 1981),pp. 109-19.

92. Francois Guizot, Des moyens degouvernement etd'opposition dans Vitalactuelde la France (1821), in Pierre Manent, op. cit., p. 157. See also PierreManent, Histoire intellectuelle du liberalisme; dix lecons (Calmann-Levy,Paris, 1987), pp. 199-219.

93. Rapport au ministre de I'inlerieur par I'inspecleur general des monuments

historiques, Merime'e, entendu par la Commission le 19jmllel 1850, in a Recueil,

Bibliotheque nationale, op. cit.94. Cf. Robin Middleton's opinion, quoted D. Watkin, op. cit.,

pp. 31-2; B. Foucart, op. cit., pp. 368-74.95. Successively, Rapport pre'sente au nom des sections reunies . . . par

M. CourcelU-Seneuil, conseilUr d'Etat, rapporteur (draft law for the conserva-

tion of historic monuments, 1881), p. 2, and Louis Tetreau, Legislationrelative aux monuments et objets d'art (Paris, 1896), p. 3. At the turn of thecentury, France's reputation on this was international: 'France has beencalled the "classic land" of monument-lore, and her Historical Monu-ments Act of 1887 is generally regarded as the most important contribu-tion yet made to legislation for the care of these relics of the past' (G. B.Brown, The Care of Ancient Monuments . . . [Cambridge, 1905), p. 73).This subject has been treated in numerous theses on the history ofarchaeology: E. Pariset, Les monuments historiques (Paris, 1891); J. Con-stans, Monuments historiques et objets d'art (Montpellier, 1905); F. Cros-

Mayrevieille, De la protection des monuments historiques ou artistiques (Paris,

1907); J . Metman, La legislation francaise relative a la protection des

monuments historiques et des objets d'art (Dijon, 1911); J . Esteve, L 'art et la

proprie'te, la protection des monuments historiques et des sites, I'embellissemenl des

villes (Paris-Nancy, 1925); G. Vernhette, Le protection des monumentshistoriques et des objets d'art en France et en Italic (Lyon, 1930); J. Beauchef,La protection des perspectives monumenlales et des sites de valeur artistique (Paris,1932); L. Sorel, La protection des paysages naturels et des perspectives monumen-lales (Caen, 1932); G. Campos, Protection des monuments et oeuvres d'art enltalie, en France el en Egypte . . . (Lyon, 1935); S. Y. Kung, La legislationrelative a la protection des monuments histonques (Paris, 1942).

96. Revue Bleue, vol. 1, pp. 3—4.97. Francois Furet summarised the point as follows: 'While the repub-

licans of the Third Republic ceded much to an Orleanist philosophy ofinterests, like their prestigious ancestors on the rue Saint-Honore theyheld to the precedence of the citizen over the private person, and thepedagogical role of the State, thus the school, in the formation of thecitizen' ('Les Jacobins', Lettre Internationale, no. 15, 1987, p. 86).

98. The formula applied to Hincmar in the lesson from the HCFseems also to apply to whoever 'makes social power the direct servantand the instrument of morality', Paul Bastide, Benjamin Constant et sadoctrine (Armand Colin, Paris, 1966), vol. 2, p. 68.

99. Pierre Manent, Les liberaux, op. cit., p. 147.

This article is an extended version of a paper given at the conference on 'Francois Guizot et la colture politiquede son temps', Colloque Val Richer, September 1987.


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