Francisque Xavier Michel

Francisque Michel ( born February 19, 1809 in Lyon, † May 18, 1887 in Paris) was a French historian, linguist, medievalist, Argotforscher and bibliomaniac.

Life and work

Michel made ​​High School in 1830 in Paris and began studying at the Ecole des Chartes, but he was not cut out for a regular career. He was - in contact with Charles Nodier ( librarian of the Arsenal Library), François- Juste -Marie Raynouard, Jean -Baptiste- Bonaventure de Roquefort, Louis Monmerqué and Pierre -Claude Daunou - a passionate and unique hustler in the archives and manuscript departments of libraries from which he the dusty medieval treasures brought in a romantic enthusiasm to hundreds of daylight and published.

When he realized that many of these treasures were stored in England, he was send in 1833 by the Minister François Guizot official mission to London to the British Museum, also to Cambridge and Oxford, where she discovered in 1835, the Song of Roland, the original text in French literature, which he also first published in 1837 ( La chanson de Roland ou de Roncevaux, you XIIe siècle pour la première fois publiée d'après le manuscrit de la Bibliothèque Bodléienne à Oxford, Paris 1837, Paris 1869, Geneva 1974, Paris 1975). In the same year he became the Minister of Education Narcisse - Achille de Salvandy a member of the Comité de l' histoire positive et des chroniques, Chartes et inscriptions made ​​, the chaired by Silvestre de Sacy nor Joseph Naudet (1787-1878), Benjamin Guérard ( 1797-1854), Jacques -Joseph Champollion and Jules Desnoyers belonged. 1838 that it hit him a Knight of the Legion of Honour, and gave him, who had only boast his graduation certificate, 1839 a ( newly created ) Department of Foreign Literature in Bordeaux, but what amounted to a kind of exile. In 1846 he habilitated in Paris with the two theses Quae vices quaeque mutationes et Virgilium ipsum et ejus carmina by mediam aetatem exceperint explanare tentavit Franciscus Michel ( Paris 1846) and Histoire des races maudites de la France et de l' Espagne ( 2 vols. Paris 1847 Monein 2008).

From 1850 onwards, Michel did remarkable mainly for trade original historical research through books about the Basque Country and Scotland, as well as research on the argot and by a French Argotwörterbuch. He also published translations of Shakespeare, Goldsmith, stars and Tennyson.

Michel was a corresponding member of the Institut de France, and the academies in Vienna and Turin. On the title page of his Etudes de philology comparée sur l' argot he calls himself doctor of the University of Marburg ( the local Romanist was Adolf Ebert ).

If he consequently the recognition has not failed, thus remained the part of the official French Romance a vast reserve that ( literature see below) there is, for example, in a review of his edition of the Roman de la Rose by Paul Meyer expressed. Meyer missed any historical-critical method, collation of textual variants, etc., and have to say instead that Michel has just expanded an existing since 1814 to issue a couple of inconsequential and some false information and also the Verszählung is mostly wrong. His final judgment is ( p. 179):

" Quand on a, comme M. Fr Michel, l' honneur d' avoir été l' un des premiers et parmi ceux qui actifs the plus ont travaillé à mettre en lumière notre littérature ancienne, on devrait s'abstenir de rien produire plutôt que de son nom compromettre par of publications à tout le moins bien peu d' estime dignes »

Other works

• Examination critique de la dissertation de M. Henri Monin sur le Roman de Ronceveaux, Paris 1832
• Bibliothèque Anglo- saxonne, Paris 1838
• Rapport à M. le ministre de l' instruction publique sur les anciens monuments de l' histoire et de la littérature de la France qui se trouvent dans les bibliothèques de l' Angleterre et de l' Écosse, Paris 1839
• Histoire des Dukes of Normandy et des rois d' Angleterre, Paris 1840
• Le roman du Saint [ de Robert de Borron ], publié pour la première fois d'après un ms. de la Bibliothèque royale, Bordeaux 1841
• Bohême (along with Edouard Fournier ) La grande histoire des royaumes d' Argot et de Thunes, you duché d' Égypte, suivie d'un dictionnaire complet the diverses langues et fourbesques argotiques à toutes les de l'Europe époques, 2 vols, Paris 1850
• (along with Édouard Fournier ) Histoire des hôtelleries, cabarets, hôtels rooming houses, restaurants and cafes et, et the anciennes communautés confreries et d' hotelier de marchands de vins de restaurateurs, de Limonadiers, etc., Paris 1851-1854
• Recherches sur le commerce, la fabrication et l' usage de soie of étoffes, d'or et d' argent et autres tissus précieux en Occident, principalement en France, pendant le moyen âge, Paris 1852-1854, Amsterdam 2001
• Études de philology comparée sur l' argot et sur ​​les idiomes analogues parles en Europe et en Asie, Paris 1856 (contains a four hundred -page Argotwörterbuch of French)
• Le Pays basque, sa population, sa langue, ses moeurs, sa littérature et sa musique, Paris 1857, Donostia 1998
• Les Écossais en France et les Français de Écosse, London 1862
• Le Roman de la Rose, reissued, Paris 1864
• Histoire du commerce et de la navigation à Bordeaux, 1867-1871, Pau 2005
• A critical inquiry into the Scottish language with the view of Illustrating the rise and progress of civilization in Scotland, Edinburgh / London 1882