Jean Michel Constant Leber

Who was Jean Michel Constant Leber?

Jean Michel Constant Leber, French historian and bibliophile, was born at Orléans on 8 May 1780. His first work was a poem on Joan of Arc; but he wrote at the same time a Grammaire gendral synthetique, which attracted the attention of J. M. de Grando, then secretary-general to the ministry of the interior. The latter found him a minor post in his department, which left him leisure for his historical work. He even took him to Italy when Napoleon was trying to organize, after French models, the Roman states which he had taken from the Pope in 1809. Leber however did not stay there long, for he considered the attacks on the temporal property of the Holy See to be sacrilegious.

On his return to Paris he resumed his administrative work, literary recreations and historical researches. While spending a part of his time writing vaudevilles and comic operas, he began to collect old essays and rare pamphlets by old French historians. His office was preserved to him by the Restoration, and Leber put his literary gifts at the service of the government. When the question of the coronation of Louis XVIII arose, he wrote, as an answer to Volney, a minute treatise on the Harmonies du sacre, which was published at the time of the coronation of Charles X.