Dubos, Jean Baptiste

Dubos, Jean Baptiste 

Born December 1670, in Beauvais; died Mar. 23, 1742, in Paris. French abbot and historian. Member of the French Academy from 1720.

In the course of a polemic with the Germanist H. Boulainvilliers, Dubos for the first time formulated the position of the so-called Romanists. He rejected the fact that the Franks conquered Gaul, claiming that the Gauls themselves invited the Franks and that this was followed by a peaceful assimilation of the Germans by the Gallo-Romans. Dubos also claimed that aristocratic privileges appeared in the ninth and tenth centuries only as a result of the usurpation of the people’s rights by the aristocracy; he believed that this justified the rising bourgeoisie’s struggle with the feudal aristocracy.

WORKS

Histoire de la Ligue faite á Cambray. … 5th ed., vols. 1-2. Paris, 1785.
Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchic française dans les Gaules, vols. 1-2. Paris, 1742.
Reflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, 7th ed., vols. 1-3. Paris, 1770.