- Claude Fleury (1640-1723), educator, historian, jurist and cleric was also royal tutor and immortel of the Académie Française. Before taking orders he was one of the most brilliant lawyers of the Parlement de Paris and for sixteen years tutor of the Dukes of Bourgogne, Anjou and Berry, grandsons of Louis XV. Among his numerous works on French and ecclesiastical law, the most important is his Histoire ecclésiastique, a thorough theological, historical, and anecdotal chronicle of the Catholic Church from the time of the Evangelists to 1595. It was highly praised by La Harpe and Voltaire who acclaimed that it was the best history of Christianity ever written. Fleury worked on it the last thirty-five years of his life and it was published in 20 volumes from 1691 to 1720. A 21st volume was composed but never published (Niceron). Fleury prefaced 8 volumes with discourses called by Voltaire 'almost philosophical', and it is supposed that the discourse on the age of reformation by Goujet (1697-1767) in vol. 33 of the continuation by Jean-Claude Fabre was prepared in outline by him (Wanner, p. 24). In view of the crisis in seventeenth-century historical scholarship Fleury's Magnum Opus becomes all the more impressive. This crisis, the failure of historians to interpret the past correctly (Hazard), was met by Fleury with rigorous principles of scholarship which initiated a new tradition of critical analysis, sound documentation and precise, clear and forthright style (Wanner). Fleury was in contact with brilliant thinkers and scholars like Bossuet and De Lamoignon, and worked closely with Fénelon on a day by day basis over a period of many years. The same scientific method was followed by the editors of the continuation who consulted a.o. Mariana. "L'Histoire ecclesiastique de Fleury est un ouvrage bien ecrit et que recommande son impartialite: sous ce double rapport il merite d'etre place dans toute bibliotheque un peu volumineuse. "--Brunet II, p. 1291. "L Histoire ecclésiastique est un travail immense où l on trouve plus que de l érudition ; elle est écrite avec précaution, mais avec critique et bonne foi. (de Barante)." This set has been very well preserved. Of the more than 2500 quires published in over 25 years we found only in vol. II 4 quires missing. The volumes are generally nice and clean internally. They have a small ex-libris on first endpaper and only minor wear to capitals, edges and corners. Detailed desciption of the condition of each volume and picture of the set on request. Cf. DThC VI, 21vv.; LThK IV, 167v.; RGG II, 978.; Wanner, R.E., Claude Fleury (1640-1723) as an educational historiographer and thinker, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1975.