Victor Duruy

Jean Victor Duruy (French: [viktɔʁ dyʁɥi]; 10 September 1811 – 25 November 1894) was a French historian and statesman.

Life

Duruy was born in Paris, the son of a factory worker, and at first intended for his father's trade. Having passed brilliantly through the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied under Jules Michelet, he accompanied Michelet as secretary in his travels through France, substituting for him at the École Normale in 1836, when only twenty-four. Ill health forced him to resign, and poverty caused him to undertake writing an extensive series of school textbooks, which made him well known.

He devoted himself to secondary school education, holding his chair in the College Henri IV at Paris for over a quarter of a century. Already known as a historian by his Histoire des Romains et des peuples soumis à leur domination (7 vols, 1843–1844), he was chosen by Napoleon III to assist him in his biography of Julius Caesar, and his abilities being thus brought under the emperor's notice, he was in 1863 appointed minister of education. In this position he worked incessantly, attempting broad and liberal reforms. On 18 March 1864, Duruy visited the Christian Brothers' boarding school in Passy (the Pensionnat des Frères des écoles chrétiennes à Passy) and complimented the Brothers "in the most flattering terms upon the appearance and tendency of the pensionnat".¹ Another ministerial visit took place on 12 May of the same year,

caused by the resistance to the projet de loi for special instruction² which was manifested in the parliamentary commission which had been appointed to examine the subject. To overcome this opposition M. Duruy invited the members of the commission to accompany him to Passy, in order to demonstrate to them, as he expressed it, the successful realization of his project by the Christian Brothers.¹

Ironically, despite open domestic opposition to his views in education, he was instrumental in the reformation of in 1868, in strict concordance with his secular views, as the first Western-style state higher education institution in the .