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3 September 1880 (1880-09-04) (aged 78) Châtellerault
Nationality
French
Signature
Marie-Félicité Brosset (24 January 1802 – 3 September 1880) was a French historian and scholar who worked mostly in the Russian Empire. He specialized in Georgian and Armenian studies.
Brosset's interest in the Caucasus developed while still in France. By the time he relocated to Saint Petersburg, of his 47 published works 36 were dedicated to Georgia,[1] an interest he kept up throughout his career.
Early life and first works
Marie-Félicité[2] Brosset was born in Paris into the family of a poor merchant, who died a few months after his birth. His mother destined him to the Church. He attended the theological seminaries in Orléans, where he studied Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic.[citation needed]
From 1826 he devoted himself to the Armenian and Georgian languages, as well as their history and culture. He had finally found his true vocation. Books, texts, teachers, and documents were all scarce, however. For his work in Armenian, he was helped by Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin.[4] For his Georgian work, he had to create his own dictionary from the Georgian translation of the Bible, which was faithful to the Greek text.[citation needed]
Russia
Invited to Saint Petersburg in 1837 by the president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Count Sergey Uvarov, Brosset was elected a member a year later. He journeyed to the Caucasus in 1847–48. Brosset translated—and commented on—the major medieval and early-modern Georgian chroniclers. He published his work in seven volumes from 1849 to 1858. His magnum opus, Histoire de la Géorgie, was a long-standing authority on the history of Georgia.[5] Brosset also published the correspondence between the czars and the kings of Georgia that occurred from 1639 to 1770.[6]
From 1861 to 1868, Brosset focused on his series regarding Armenian historians, but continued to work on them until 1876. Brosset wrote over 250 works on Georgian and Armenian history and culture overall.
Brosset left Russia in May 1880 and retired to his daughter's residence in Châtellerault. He died there several months later, on 3 September.[7] His son, Laurent, contributed heavily to the knowledge of his life and works.[citation needed]
Works
Lists of works
Brosset, Laurent. Bibliographie analytique — 271 titles, not counting supplements. Alphabetical index: p. 585-704
Histoire de la Géorgie depuis l'Antiquité jusqu'au XIXe siècle, Introduction, CCXIV p., and Tables of contents, XCVI p., Saint Petersburg: Académie impériale des sciences, 1858.
Collection d'historiens arméniens: dix ouvrages sur l'histoire de l'Arménie et des pays adjacents du Xe au XIXe siècle, reprinted by APA-Philo Press, 1978 ISBN9060223489.
^Then as now these two first names were almost always female.[clarification needed] In Russia, he is often called Марий Иванович Броссе, Marius Ivanovitch Brosset.
^Saint-Martin died of cholera in 1832 during the second pandemic. Brosset, who loved him much, wrote his obituary.
^"Brosset's Histoire was a sensational breakthrough. But from our vantage a century and a half later, it is not without shortcomings. Today we know that Brosset's edition is based exclusively upon a few MSS of the Vaxtangiseuli recension. We can hardly fault Brosset on this point [...]" Rapp, Stephen H. Studies in medieval Georgian historiography: early texts and Eurasian contexts, p. 31, at Google Books, Peeters Publishers, 2003 ISBN9789042913189
Rapp, Stephen H. Studies in medieval Georgian historiography: early texts and Eurasian contexts, Peeters Publishers, 2003, 522 p. ISBN9789042913189(in English)
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