Augustin Fliche

Augustin Fliche (19 November 1884 – 19 November 1951) was a 20th-century French historian specializing in the history of the Church in the Middle Ages.

Biography

Although he was born in Montpellier and spent most of his career in the city, Augustin Fliche lived his early years outside his birth place.

He was the only son and eldest of three children. His mother, Madeleine Jean, was the last heir of a line of eight generations of notaries in Montpellier. His father, Louis Fliche (1856–1947), was a lawyer for sixty years at the Paris bar and active in a religious charity organization, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.

He studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand with Professor Émile Mâle, then at the Sorbonne under Christian Pfister, Ferdinand Lot and Charles Diehl. In 1907, Fliche was awarded the Agrégation in history and taught secondary school classes at the Lycée de Bordeaux. He continued his studies by obtaining a doctorate in literature in 1912. At the request of Professor Albert Dufourcq, he joined the Faculty of literature in Bordeaux. After an interruption of five years due to World War I, he was attached to the University of Montpellier to teach medieval history, first as a lecturer, then as a professor. Fliche was also visiting professor at the University of Leuven in (1925–1927, 1946–1947) and at the University of Coimbra, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. With the same distinction, he participated in the reconstruction of the library of the University of Leuven.

He is known among other things for his biographies of Philip I of France and of Pope Gregory VII with his reforms. He also wrote a general history of the Middle Ages.

From 1935, he directed with Victor Martin a Histoire de l'Église depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours published by Bloud and Gay.

In 1941, he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

A conservative Maréchaliste, he was the Dean of the University of Letters in Montpellier when he tried, in 1941, to prevent the appointment of the historian Marc Bloch, who had been excluded as a Jew from his university post in Strasbourg in October 1940 by the Jewish laws of Pétain, and who had taken refuge in Montpellier, going underground in 1942. He warned his superiors that a public lecture by Marc Bloch might provoke hostile demonstrations.

In 1946, Fliche resigned as dean of the University of Montpellier because of his service during the Vichy government.

He was buried in the Saint-Lazare cemetery in Montpellier. The city council of Montpellier has named an urban street after the dean of the Faculty of Letters: Augustin Fliche Avenue.

Works

• 1912: Le Règne de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1060–1108). Paris, Société française d'imprimerie et de librairie, Archive.
• 1912: Les Vies de Saint Savinien. Premier évêque de Sens : étude critique suivie d'une édition de la plus ancienne vita. Société française d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, Archive (on Savinien de Sens, first bishop of Sens, Yonne in the 3rd century).
• 1916: Études sur la polémique religieuse à l'époque de Grégoire VII. Société française d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, Paris Archive.
• 1920: Saint Grégoire VII. Lecoffre, Archive
• 1924–1937: La Réforme grégorienne, 3 volumes. Louvain
• 1929: La Chrétienté médiévale 395-1254. Histoire du monde, VII/2
• 1930: L'Europe occidentale de 888 à 1125. Histoire générale. Histoire du moyen âge, II.
• 1946: with R. Foreville, Jean Rousset : La Réforme grégorienne et la reconquête chrétienne (1057–1123). Histoire de l'église depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, Teilband 8. Bloud & Gay, Paris
• 1946: La querelle des investitures. Aubier, Éditions Montaigne
• 1948: with Christine Thouzellier, Yvonne Azais : Du premier concile du Latran à l'avènement d'Innocent III (1123–1198). Histoire de l'église depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, Fascicule 9. Bloud & Gay
• 1950: with Christine Thouzellier, Yvonne Azais : La Chrétienté romaine (1198–1274). Histoire de l'église depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, Fascicule 10. Bloud & Gay.

External links

• Works by Augustin Fliche at Gallica
• Fliche, Augustin in Encyclopédie Treccani
• Entry in IDIH
• OPAC, Regesta Imperii