Auguste Molinier was a 19th-century French historian.
Biography
Born in Toulouse, Auguste Molinier was a student at the École Nationale des Chartes, which he left in 1873, and also at the École pratique des hautes études; and he obtained appointments in the public libraries at the Mazarine, at Fontainebleau, and at Sainte-Geneviève, of which he was nominated librarian in 1885. He was a good palaeographer and had a thorough knowledge of archives and manuscripts; and he soon won a first place among scholars of the history of medieval France. His thesis on leaving the École des Chartes was his Catalogue des actes de Simon et d'Amauri de Montfort, an important contribution to the history of the Albigenses. This marked him out as a capable editor for the new edition of L'histoire générale de Languedoc by Dom Vaissète: he superintended the reprinting of the text, adding notes on the feudal administration of this province from 900 to 1250, on the government of Alphonse of Toulouse, brother of St Louis, and on the historical geography of the province of Languedoc in the Middle Ages. He also wrote a Bibliographie du Languedoc, which was awarded a prize by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, but remained in manuscript. He also published several documents for the Société de l'Orient Latin ; for the Société de l'Histoire de France ; for the Collection de textes relatifs à l'enseignement de l'histoire ; for the Collection des documents inédits ; for the Recueil des historiens de la France, etc., and several volumes in the Recueil des catalogues des bibliothèques publiques de France. Applying to the French classics the rigorous method used with regard to the texts of the Middle Ages, he published the Pensées of Pascal, revised with the original manuscript, and the Provinciales, edited with notes. In 1893 he was nominated professor at the École des Chartes, and gave a successful series of lectures which he published. He also taught at the École pratique des hautes études. He died after a short illness, leaving in manuscript a criticism on the sources of the Speculum historiale of Vincent de Beauvais. His elder brother, Charles, is also of some importance as an historian, particularly on the history of art and on the heresies of the Middle Ages. He was appointed professor of history at the university of Toulouse in 1886. A younger brother, Émile, was keeper at the Musée du Louvre and a well-known connoisseur of art.
Works
"Catalogue des actes de Simon et d'Amaury de Montfort" in Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, vol. 34
Étude sur l'administration féodale dans le Languedoc , 1878
