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Rh means of history, an idea which was new to France at that time. The Franco-German War engaged Flach’s activities in other directions, and he spent two years (described in his Strasbourg après le bombardement, 1873) at work on the rebuilding of the library and the museum, which had been destroyed by Prussian shells. When the time came for him to choose between Germany and France, he settled definitely in Paris, where he completed his scientific training at the École des Chartes and the École des Hautes Études. Having acted for some time as secretary to Jules Sénard, ex-president of the Constituent Assembly, he published an original paper on artistic copyright, but as soon as possible resumed the history of law. In 1879 he became assistant to the jurist Edouard Laboulaye at the Collège de France, and succeeded him in 1884 in the chair of comparative legislation. Since 1877 he had been professor of comparative law at the free school of the political sciences. To qualify himself for these two positions he had to study the most diverse civilizations, including those of the East and Far East (e.g. Hungary, Russia and Japan) and even the antiquities of Babylonia and other Asiatic countries. Some of his lectures have been published, particularly those concerning Ireland: Histoire du régime agraire de l’Irlande (1883); Considérations sur l’histoire politique de l’Irlande (1885); and Jonathan Swift, son action politique en Irlande (1886).

His chief efforts, however, were concentrated on the history of ancient French law. A celebrated lawsuit in Alsace, pleaded by his friend and compatriot Ignace Chauffour, aroused his interest by reviving the question of the origin of the feudal laws, and gradually led him to study the formation of those laws and the early growth of the feudal system. His great work, Les Origines de l’ancienne France, was produced slowly. In the first volume, Le Régime seigneurial (1886), he depicts the triumph of individualism and anarchy, showing how, after Charlemagne’s great but sterile efforts to restore the Roman principle of sovereignty, the great landowners gradually monopolized the various functions in the state; how society modelled on antiquity disappeared; and how the only living organisms were vassalage and clientship. The second volume, Les Origines communales, la féodalité et la chevalerie (1893), deals with the reconstruction of society on new bases which took place in the 10th and 11th centuries. It explains how the Gallo-Roman villa gave place to the village, with its fortified castle, the residence of the lord; how new towns were formed by the side of old, some of which disappeared; how the townspeople united in corporations; and how the communal bond proved to be a powerful instrument of cohesion. At the same time it traces the birth of feudalism from the germs of the Gallo-Roman personal comitatus; and shows how the bond that united the different parties was the contract of the fief; and how, after a slow growth of three centuries, feudalism was definitely organized in the 12th century. In 1904 appeared the third volume, La Renaissance de l’état, in which the author describes the efforts of the Capetian kings to reconstruct the power of the Frankish kings over the whole of Gaul; and goes on to show how the clergy, the heirs of the imperial tradition, encouraged this ambition; how the great lords of the kingdom (the “princes,” as Flach calls them), whether as allies or foes, pursued the same end; and how, before the close of the 12th century, the Capetian kings were in possession of the organs and the means of action which were to render them so powerful and bring about the early downfall of feudalism.

In these three volumes, which appeared at long intervals, the author’s theories are not always in complete harmony, nor are they always presented in a very luminous or coherent manner, but they are marked by originality and vigour. Flach gave them a solid basis by the wide range of his researches, utilizing charters and cartularies (published and unpublished), chronicles, lives of saints, and even those dangerous guides, the chansons de geste. He owed little to the historians of feudalism who knew what feudalism was, but not how it came about. He pursued the same method in his L’Origine de l’habitation et des lieux habités en France (1899), in which he discusses some of the theories circulated by A. Meitzen in Germany and by Arbois de Jubainville ville in France. Following in the footsteps of the jurist F. C. von Savigny, Flach studied the teaching of law in the middle ages and the Renaissance, and produced Cujas, les glossateurs et les Bartolistes (1883), and Études critiques sur l’histoire du droit romain au moyen âge, avec textes inédits (1890).

FLACIUS (Ger. Flach; Slav. Vlakich), MATTHIAS (1520–1575), surnamed, Lutheran reformer, was born at Albona, in Illyria, on the 3rd of March 1520. Losing his father in childhood, he was in early years self-educated, and made himself able to profit by the instructions of the humanist, Baptista Egnatius in Venice. At the age of seventeen he decided to join a monastic order, with a view to sacred learning. His intention was diverted by his uncle, Baldo Lupetino, provincial of the Franciscans, in sympathy with the Reformation, who induced him to enter on a university career, from 1539, at Basel, Tübingen and Wittenberg. Here he was welcomed (1541) by Melanchthon, being well introduced from Tübingen, and here he came under the decisive influence of Luther. In 1544 he was appointed professor of Hebrew at Wittenberg. He married in the autumn of 1545, Luther taking part in the festivities. He took his master’s degree on the 24th of February 1546, ranking first among the graduates. Soon he was prominent in the theological discussions of the time, opposing strenuously the “Augsburg Interim,” and the compromise of Melanchthon known as the “Leipzig Interim” (see ). Melanchthon wrote of him with venom as a renegade (“aluimus in sinu serpentem”), and Wittenberg became too hot for him. He removed to Magdeburg (Nov. 9, 1551), where his feud with Melanchthon was patched up. On the 17th of May 1557 he was appointed professor of New Testament theology at Jena; but was soon involved in controversy with Strigel, his colleague, on the synergistic question (relating to the function of the will in conversion). Affirming the natural inability of man, he unwittingly fell into expressions consonant with the Manichaean view of sin, as not an accident of human nature, but involved in its substance, since the Fall. Resisting ecclesiastical censure, he left Jena (Feb. 1562) to found an academy at Regensburg. The project was not successful, and in October 1566 he accepted a call from the Lutheran community at Antwerp. Thence he was driven (Feb. 1567) by the exigencies of war, and betook himself to Frankfort, where the authorities set their faces against him. He proceeded to Strassburg, was well received by the superintendent Marbach, and hoped he had found an asylum. But here also his religious views stood in his way; the authorities eventually ordering him to leave the city by Mayday 1573. Again betaking himself to Frankfort, the prioress, Catharina von Meerfeld, of the convent of White Ladies, harboured him and his family in despite of the authorities. He fell ill at the end of 1574; the city council ordered him to leave by Mayday 1575; but death released him on the 11th of March 1575. His first wife, by whom he had twelve children, died in 1564; in the same year he remarried and had further issue. His son Matthias was professor of philosophy and medicine at Rostock. Of a life so tossed about the literary fruit was indeed remarkable. His polemics we may pass over; he stands at the fountain-head of the scientific study of church history, and—if we except, a great exception, the work of Laurentius Valla—of hermeneutics also. No doubt his impelling motive was to prove popery to be built on bad history and bad exegesis. Whether that be so or not, the extirpation of bad history and bad exegesis is now felt to be of equal interest to all religionists. Hence the permanent and continuous value of the principles embodied in Flacius’ Catalogus testium veritatis (1556; revised edition by J. C. Dietericus, 1672) and his Clavis scripturae sacrae (1567), followed by his Glossa compendiaria in N. Testamentum (1570). His characteristic formula, “historia est fundamentum doctrinae,” is better understood now than in his own day.

See J. B. Ritter, Flacius’s Leben u. Tod (1725); M. Twesten, M. Flacius Illyricus (1844); W. Preger, M. Flacius Illyricus u. seine Zeit (1859–1861); G. Kawerau, in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (1899).