1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Buchon, Jean Alexandre

BUCHON, JEAN ALEXANDRE (1791–1849), French scholar, was born on the 21st of May 1791 at Menetou-Salon (Cher), and died on the 29th of August 1849. An ardent Liberal, he took an active part in party struggles under the Restoration, while throwing himself with equal vigour into the great work of historical regeneration which was going on at that period. During 1822 and the succeeding years he travelled about Europe on the search for materials for his Collection des chroniques nationales françaises écrites en langue vulgaire du XIIIᵉ au XVIᵉ siècle (47 vols., 1824–1829). After the revolution of 1830 he founded the Panthéon litteraire, in which he published a Choix d’ouvrages mystiques (1843), a Choix de monuments primitifs de l’église chrétienne (1837), a Choix des historiens grecs (1837), a collection of Chroniques étrangères relatives aux expéditions françaises pendant le XIIIᵉ siècle (1840), and, most important of all, a Choix de chroniques et mémoires sur l’histoire de France (1836–1841). His travels in southern Italy and in the East had put him upon the track of the medieval French settlements in those regions, and to this subject he devoted several important works: Recherches et matériaux pour servir a une histoire de la domination française dans les provinces démembrées de l’empire grec (1840); Nouvelles recherches historiques sur la principauté française de Morée et ses hautes baronnies (2 vols., 1843–1844); Histoire des conquêtes et de l’établissement des Français dans les états de l’ancienne Grèce sous es Villehardouin (1846, unfinished). None of the numerous publications which we owe to Buchon can be described as thoroughly scholarly; but they have been of great service to history, and those concerning the East have in especial the value of original research.