Hippolyte Fortoul

Hippolyte Fortoul
Born	(1811-08-04)4 August 1811 Digne, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France
Died	Bad Ems, Germany
Nationality	French
Occupation	Journalist, historian and politician

Hippolyte Fortoul (4 August 1811 – 4 July 1856) was a French journalist, historian and politician.

Early years

Hippolyte Fortoul was born in Digne. He began his studies in Digne and finished them at the college of Lyon. Towards the end of 1829, he moved to Paris and made himself known early on through various historical and literary publications. As a young critic of the Revue encyclopédique, of Saint-Simonian obedience, he intervened in 1833 to denounce the bad genius of literature, art for art's sake, and he would return to this criticism twenty years later, but in a different context when he was a minister. He was appointed professor of French literature at the faculty of Toulouse in 1840 and became dean of the faculty of Aix-en-Provence in 1846. It was at this time that he began his research on Sieyès, based on his unpublished manuscripts, research that he continued for many years without publishing his work, parts of which are preserved in manuscript in the National Archives.

Of radical opinions in his youth, he inclined towards Saint-Simonian socialism and the republic; but his ideas evolved later.

In 1848, he was elected as a representative to the National Assembly where he sat on the benches of the Élysée party until the end of the Second Republic, where he gained the appreciation of Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. After a brief stint as Minister of the Navy, after the 1851 French coup d'état, the latter called him to the Ministry of Public Instruction, a position he held until his death. He was appointed senator in 1853.

In this position, he showed an interest in the oral tradition and initiated a survey to collect and publish French folk songs. With the support of Jean-Jacques Ampère, he contacted 212 local scholars from all regions of France, who, over a period of four years, carried out the first systematic collection of regional music. In 1857, an inventory of the documents received was established with the aim of constituting a General Collection of the Popular Poems of France. Faced with the immensity of the task, the project was abandoned and the manuscripts received were deposited in 1877 at the National Library of France.

Attached to the modernization of education, he developed the study of modern languages and gymnastics, and created a scientific section distinct from the literary section from the fourth grade on (this is what has been called the "bifurcation of studies", a reform prepared by Urbain Le Verrier and Jean-Baptiste Dumas). However, his administration is best remembered for bringing the University into line: he abolished the irremovability of faculty professors and dismissed opponents such as Victor Cousin, Michelet, Edgar Quinet, Jules Simon; he took back in hand the École normale whose students had been hostile to December 2; in 1854, he decided that, from now on, the members of the Superior Council of Public Instruction and of the academic councils would be appointed by the minister, and relinquished to the communes the appointment of teachers, to the benefit of the rector and then of the prefect. After the 1848 Revolution, he abolished the agrégation in history and philosophy, replacing the latter subject in the lycées by a simple teaching of logic, in order to exclude from studies "these reckless problems which throw confusion into the minds without enlightening them, which excite an anxious curiosity without satisfying it." He obliged the faculty professors to submit their course outlines in advance, and provided the entire teaching staff with strict and detailed regulations: he went so far as to prohibit the wearing of beards, "a symbol of anarchy", in a circular addressed to the rectors on March 20, 18524. He also tried to reform the Institute of France, a troublesome focus of opposition, but finally succeeded only in creating a new section of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (the section of politics, administration and finance) of which he appointed the 10 members.

Having become a minister at a time when the government needed the help of the Church and when Napoleon III wanted an agreement with the Holy See, he had to deal with the clerical and ultramontane influences. Thus, when there was a conflict between a teacher and a priest, the minister always gave satisfaction to the latter. However, he was anxious to limit the domination of the clergy over public education, and for this reason he tried to make it unassailable from the religious point of view, in order to remove from the priests and bishops any pretext for interference. For example, in 1853 he deleted from the list all Protestant and Israelite names of persons intending to become professors of literature, and then told the Protestant authorities that it was the determination of the government to limit the candidacy of Jews and Protestants intending to teach the sciences. He thus succeeded in saving the very existence of public secular education, which the many Catholics wanted to dismantle completely. Not very favorable to the Falloux law (he considered that state education was sufficiently reliable on the political level since it had been taken over), he nevertheless allowed the growth of free education to continue, and he limited himself to imposing the inspection of establishments, essentially with a view to preventing a legitimist influence hostile to the Empire from developing (thus he had a Jesuit college closed where the breaking of the bust of Napoleon III by the students had not been sanctioned. In the same way, he forbade the opening of a religious college in a diocese where the bishop proved his opposition to the regime).

Suspicious of the congregations, though not Gallican, but pushed in this direction by his administration, he defended the customs of the Church of France, the rights of the bishops and those of the State against the Pope, especially in matters of episcopal appointments (where he was poorly supported by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and by the French ambassador in Rome; but he obtained all the same, after lengthy negotiations, the resignation of the Legitimist bishop of Luçon, who was an outspoken critic of the Empire). In fact, he had to content himself with keeping up appearances; and, besides, the majority of the bishops appointed under his administration were ultramontane, these being more zealous supporters of the Empire than the Gallicans. He was appointed senator in 1854. Napoleon III having always kept his confidence in him, he was still in office at the time of his sudden death of a heart attack, which occurred at the waters of Bad Ems, Germany.

Works

• Histoire du seizième siècle (1838)
• Grandeur de la vie privée (1838; 2 volumes)
• Les Fastes de Versailles, depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours (1839)
• Du Génie de Virgile (1840)
• De l’Art en Allemagne (1841–1842; 2 volumes)
• Essai sur les poèmes et sur les images de la Danse des morts (1842)
• Essai sur la théorie et sur l’histoire de la peinture chez les anciens et chez les modernes (1845)
• Une page de l’histoire contemporaine. La révision de la constitution (1851)
• Études d’archéologie et d’histoire (1854; 2 volumes)
• Instruction générale sur l’exécution du plan d’études des lycées (1854)
• Journal d’Hippolyte Fortoul, ministre de l’Instruction publique et des Cultes, 1811-1856 (1979–1989; edited by Geneviève Massa-Gille; 2 volumes)

References

Citations

Sources

External links

• Works by Hippolyte Fortoul at Gallica