Enlightenment and Erudition: Writing Cultural History at the Académie des inscriptions

Abstract

This article explores continuities between the antiquarian erudition of humanist historians and Enlightenment philosophical histories, showing that supposedly revolutionary developments in eighteenth-century historiography emerged from an older scholarly tradition. It focuses on the research of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, a learned society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France that went from serving as a propaganda tool for promoting King Louis XIV's absolutist regime to becoming the first modern historical research institute and a cradle of the Enlightenment. The article examines the emergence of what might be called “cultural history” or “the history of culture” (histoire des moeurs, as eighteenth-century authors called it). It analyzes how the academicians studied pagan beliefs and speculated about the functions of ancient myths and cults, thus transforming the views about the origin of religion and its role in society. The article also discusses how the academicians made sense of customs and daily practices and how they understood the causes of the progress and decline of civilizations.