Antiquariat et notabilité : l'inscription des érudits locaux dans les élites urbaines du Nord de la France au XIXe siècle

Abstract

Odile Parsis-Barube, Antique Scholarship and Notability : the Situation of Local Scholars within the Urban Elites of Northern France in the XIXth century. The institutionalization, wished for by Guizot, of the Antiquarian movement around learned societies specialized in history and archaeology, links the local scholar to the city, even if XIXth century literature contributes to cast of him the image of an ermit living away from the turmoil and from the circles of urban sociability. This paper is restricted to the geographic framework of the Somme, Pas-de-Calais and Nord departments and raises the question of the belonging of the local scholars to the region's urban elites. This question is looked at from two main angles. That first of the social ranking of the members of the learned societies : the light is cast on the persistence of a strong representation of the former privileged orders and on the importance of the involvement in scholarship of the law trades. This first part permits to emphasize a de facto elitism, established on the recognition of a standard of education and/or of wealth, as well as on the recognition of the wielding of authority in the professional and civil areas. Then that of the representations that the Antique scholars attempt, in each city, to give of themselves. The analysis bears on the system of references on which the group establishes its consciousness to belong to the urban elites and its distance with the common people. This claimed elitism, which is superimposed on the elitism identified through the prosopographical study, finds its privileged mode of expression in the reception speeches and the obituaries that learned societies grant their members.