Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jules Michelet (the 21st of August 1798 - the 9th of February 1874) was a French historian best known for his nineteen-volume Histoire de France. He is credited as the first historian to apply the term "Renaissance" systematically to an entire historical era, establishing the modern understanding of that period as a time of renewed humanism and intellectual transformation.
Michelet was the first historian to apply the French word "Renaissance" systematically to a broader historical era. The Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari had used a related concept in 1550 to describe the revival of classical art beginning with Giotto, but Michelet extended the term to describe an entire post-medieval period of cultural and intellectual transformation.
The Histoire de France comprised 19 volumes, completed in 1867 after approximately thirty years of work. The volumes span French history from its earliest origins through the eighteenth century up to the outbreak of the Revolution, with four volumes each devoted to the 16th and 17th centuries.
Athénaïs Michelet (née Mialaret) was Jules Michelet's second wife, married in 1849 when she was 23 and he was 51. A natural history writer and memoirist, she introduced him to natural history, inspired his thematic directions, and collaborated significantly on his later works, though she received no formal credit. Michelet bequeathed her the literary rights to his books and papers before his death.
Michelet lost his position at the Record Office in 1852 after refusing to swear loyalty to Napoleon III. His professorship at the Collège de France, which he had held since 1838, was also taken from him; he contended this was unjust, and it was never restored even after the new republic following Napoleon III's fall in 1870.
Michelet is buried at Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. He died in Hyères on the 9th of February 1874 and was initially interred there. At his widow's request, a Paris court granted permission for exhumation on the 13th of May 1876, and his coffin arrived in Paris on the 16th of May for reburial. His monument, designed by architect Jean-Louis Pascal, was erected in 1893 through public subscription.