Pierre Adolphe Chéruel
Encyclopedia
Pierre Adolphe Chéruel was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

.

He was born at Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...

 and educated at the École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...

, becoming a fellow (agregé) in 1830. His early studies were concerned with local history. His Histoire de Rouen sous la domination anglaise au XVe siècle (1840) and Histoire de Rouen pendant l'époque communale, 1550-1382 (Rouen, 1843-1844), are major productions for a time when the archives were neither catalogued nor classified, and contain useful documents previously unpublished. His theses for the degree of doctor, De l'administration de Louis XIV d'après les Mémoires inédits d'Olivier d'Ormesson and De Maria Stuarta et Henrico III (1849), led him to the study of general history. The former was expanded afterwards under the title Histoire de l'administration monarchique en France depuis l'avènement de Philippe-Auguste jusqu'à la mort de Louis XIV (1855), and in 1855 he also published his Dictionnaire historique des institutions, mœurs et coutumes de la France, of which many editions have appeared.

These works may still be consulted for the 17th century, the period upon which Chéruel concentrated all his scientific activity. He edited successively the Journal d'Olivier Lefèvre d'Ormesson (1860–1862), interesting for the history of the parlement
Parlement
Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

of Paris during the minority of King Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

; Lettres du cardinal Mazarin pendant son ministère (6 vols, 1870-1891), continued by the vicomte G. d'Avenel; and Mémoires du duc de Saint-Simon, published for the first time according to the original manuscripts (2 editions, 1856-1858 and 1878-1881).

To Saint-Simon
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
Louis de Rouvroy commonly known as Saint-Simon was a French soldier, diplomatist and writer of memoirs, was born in Paris...

he devoted two critical studies, which are acute but not definitive: Saint-Simon considéré comme historien de Louis XIV (1865) and Notice sur la vie et sur les mémoires du duc de Saint-Simon (1876). The latter may be considered as an introduction to the famous Mémoires. Among his later writings were the Histoire de la France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV (4 vols, 1880) and Histoire de la France sous le ministère de Mazarin (1882–1883). These two works are valuable for abundance of facts, precision of details, and clear and intelligent arrangement, but are characterized by a slightly frigid style. In their compilation Chéruel used a fair number of unpublished documents. To the student of the second half of the 17th century in France, the works of Chéruel are a mine of information.
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