Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet was born on the 21st of August 1798 in Paris. His father worked as a master printer, and young Jules often assisted him with his work. This early exposure to printing shaped his future career before he ever entered a university lecture hall. He chose to study at the Lycée Charlemagne instead of accepting a position at the imperial printing office. The school offered a prestigious secondary education that prepared him for higher academic pursuits.
In 1821, he passed the university examination and secured an appointment as a professor of history at the Collège Rollin. By 1824, he had married Pauline Rousseau, and the couple welcomed their first child, Adèle, later that same year. Patrons like Abel-François Villemain and Victor Cousin supported his early academic career during these formative years. Between 1825 and 1827, he produced drafts and chronological tables relating to modern history.
His first published works were school textbooks designed for students. In 1827, he released Précis d’histoire moderne, which became an influential overview of contemporary history. That same year, he was appointed as a maître de conférences at the École normale supérieure. He followed this with Introduction à l'histoire universelle in 1831.
The events of the July Revolution of 1830 put Michelet in a better position for his research. He secured a position at the Record Office and served as deputy professor under historian François Guizot in the literary faculty of the University of France. Soon afterwards, he began his magnum opus, the Histoire de France, which would take thirty years to complete.
In 1838, his studies reinforced his natural aversion to the principles of authority and ecclesiasticism. During the revival of Jesuit activity in France, he was appointed to the chair of history at the Collège de France. Assisted by his friend Edgar Quinet, he began a polemic against the religious order and the principles that it represented. He published Histoire Romaine in 1839, the same year his first wife died.
The results of his lectures appeared in volumes covering Roman history. These books did not display the dramatic style that characterizes his later works. However, they contained many of his core beliefs, a mixture of sentimentalism, communism, and anti-sacerdotalism. When the revolution broke out in 1848, he devoted himself to his literary work instead of entering active political life.
During this period, Michelet began a series of books on natural history, starting with L’Oiseau in 1856. These works reflected his pantheistic worldview rather than a strictly scientific approach and were partly inspired by his wife, Athénaïs. The series continued with L'Insecte in 1858, La Mer in 1861, and La Montagne in 1868.
In La Montagne, Michelet adopted a more lyrical style than his typical historical narratives. He employed a staccato technique with short, fragmented sentences to build emotional tension. Two other works from this period, L’Amour in 1859 and La Femme in 1860, represent another thematic direction in his writing. These books generated debate for their detailed exploration of personal relationships and the evolving role of women in society.
Notably, Vincent van Gogh referenced La Femme in his drawing Sorrow. He inscribed it with the quote: “How can there be on earth a woman alone?” In 1862, he published La Sorcière, which developed from a historical topic and reflected some of his more unconventional views.
After Napoleon III’s rise to power in 1852, Jules Michelet lost his position at the Record Office due to his refusal to swear loyalty to the new emperor. This event further aligned him with republican ideals, a perspective likely influenced by his marriage to Athénaïs, who also supported republicanism. While Michelet’s primary focus remained on his major work, Histoire de France, he also produced additional writings during this period.
Some of these were expanded versions of specific episodes from Histoire, presented as commentaries or companion volumes. One such example is Les Femmes de la Révolution in 1854, which examined the role of women in the French Revolution, covering the period from 1780 to 1794. During this time, he lived partly in France and partly in Italy, frequently spending winters on the French Riviera, particularly in Hyères.
In 1867, Michelet completed his magnum opus, the Histoire de France, comprising nineteen volumes. The first volume deals with early French history up to the death of Charlemagne. The last three volumes carry on the history of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the Revolution.
In 1849, at age fifty-one, he married his second wife, the twenty-three-year-old Athénaïs Michelet (née Mialaret). She was a natural history writer and memoirist who had republican sympathies. She had been a teacher in Saint Petersburg before their extensive correspondence led to marriage. They entered into a shared literary life and she would assist him significantly in his endeavors.
He openly acknowledged her help, although she was never given credit in his works. After their marriage, the couple had one child, Yves Jean Lazare, in 1850. She collaborated with Michelet in his labors albeit without formal credit, introduced him to natural history, inspired him on themes, and was preparing a new work, La nature, at the time of his death in 1874.
Michelet bequeathed Athénaïs literary rights to his books and papers before he died, acknowledging the significant role she had in what he published during his later years. After winning a court challenge to this bequest, Athénaïs retained the papers and publishing rights. A memoirist, she later published several books about her husband and his family based on extracts and journals he had left her.
Michelet gave certain parts of history more weight than others, however, his insistence that history should concentrate on "the people, and not only its leaders or its institutions" was unique in historical scholarship at the time. He spent extensive time researching printed authorities and manuscripts for his Histoire de France, however, his many personal biases reduced the book's objectivity.
He wrote, "With the world began a war which will end only with the world: war of man against nature, spirit against matter, liberty against fatality." This framing of history as a struggle between Christian spirit and liberty against Jewish matter is seen by intellectual historian David Nirenberg as an example of anti-Judaism as a constituent conceptual tool in western thought.
During his career, Michelet wrote a pamphlet on the condition on France’s popular masses in relation to the growth of machinery. As noted by one observer, “While well aware that machines enslaved and demeaned their serfs, he noticed nevertheless that machine products improved the general condition of the laboring poor.” Machines, according to Michelet, had made it financially possible for whole classes to obtain household items they had never possessed before such as curtains, body linen, bed and table linen.
Upon his death from a heart attack at Hyères on the 9th of February 1874, Michelet was interred there. At his widow's request, a Paris court granted permission for his body to be exhumed on the 13th of May 1876 so he could be buried in Paris. On the 16th of May, his coffin arrived for reburial at Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Michelet's monument there, designed by architect Jean-Louis Pascal, was erected in 1893 through public subscription. The new republic was not altogether a restoration for him; his professorship at the Collège de France, of which he always contended he had been unjustly deprived, was not given back to him.
He did not live to carry further than the Battle of Waterloo when writing the nineteenth volume. His health was beginning to fail: he opened the volume with the words "age hurries me." Athénaïs lived until 1899 and later bequeathed that literary legacy to Gabriel Monod, a historian who founded the Revue historique journal.
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Common questions
When was Jules Michelet born and where?
Jules Michelet was born on the 21st of August 1798 in Paris. His father worked as a master printer, and young Jules often assisted him with his work.
What major historical works did Jules Michelet publish between 1856 and 1868?
Jules Michelet published L'Oiseau in 1856, L'Insecte in 1858, La Mer in 1861, and La Montagne in 1868. These books reflected his pantheistic worldview rather than a strictly scientific approach.
Who was Jules Michelets second wife and what role did she play in his life?
Jules Michelet married Athénaïs Mialaret in 1849 at age fifty-one. She collaborated with him significantly in his labors, introduced him to natural history, and inspired themes for his later works.
Why did Jules Michelet lose his position at the Record Office in 1852?
Jules Michelet lost his position at the Record Office due to his refusal to swear loyalty to Napoleon III after the emperor rose to power. This event further aligned him with republican ideals.
When and where did Jules Michelet die and how was he buried?
Jules Michelet died from a heart attack at Hyères on the 9th of February 1874. His body was exhumed on the 13th of May 1876 and reburied at Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris on the 16th of May.