Les premières années de l’Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes

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The First Years of The Institute for the Research of Texts and their History The idea for the founding of the Institute for the Research of Texts and their History (IRHT) originated with the historian, Félix Grat, archivist paleographer and former member of the Ecole Francaise in Rome, later elected to the National Assembly. As early as 1937, two years before the creation of CNRS, he succeeded in convincing Jean Perrin, Nobel Prize winner in physics and then Under Secretary of State for Science and Research under Prime Minister Léon Blum, of the importance of a project whose goal was nothing less than to assure the conservation of the written memory of human thought. This resulted in the foundation of the first laboratory for research in a domain other than the exact sciences. To be sure, for this classical scholar, the first priority to be carried out was the transmission of those works that had first seen the light of day in manuscript form, in particular the great writers of Ancient Rome. Right from the beginning however F. Grat laid out an ambitious program with his plan for an Arabic section (a goal that he took particularly to heart for reasons that were as scientific as they were political), as well as Greek, French, Celtic sections and so on. Being himself particularly keen on all the progress accomplished in photography, F. Grat wanted a huge library that would collect photographs of all written manuscripts spread throughout the world in diverse languages in order to make them accessible to researchers and to facilitate research. With the help of Jeanne Vieillard, who was first place in the class of 1924 at the Ecole des chartes, Félix Grat opened the new institute located at first in the Bibliothèque Nationale. He sent out his assistants throughout Europe to photograph the manuscripts. However, war was threatening and once it broke out, the patriotic F. Grat enlisted in an auxiliary corps, while the IRHT withdrew to Laval He was one of the first officers to fail at the head of his troops at the very beginning of the German offensive. Jeanne Vieillard took over the direction of the IRHT. Specialized sections were founded one after another, going even beyond the limits of the program planned by Félix Grat. At the end of 1940, the IRHT relocated to the National Archives and, in 1960, was transferred to a building constructed by CNRS on the Quai Anatole-France in Paris. Then followed twenty years of accumulating first rate documentation on each author, each text, each manuscript and in all the disciplines bordering on textual history. This was an institute ahead of its time due to its organization, specialization, technical nature and feeling for multidisciplinary research. IRHT was admired by users from all countries. The staff, well supervised by the archivists paleographers, was constantly growing and so were the programs. Already collections were established that would consolidate the international status of this laboratory which under Jean Glénisson, successor to Jeanne Vielliard, was to enjoy renewed momentum.