Historians

Régnier, Jean-Marie

A Swiss historian born in Mauléon-Licharre on April 21, 1931 into a well-known family from Mauléon (Weiss pharmacy).

He began his secondary studies at Collège Saint-François de Mauléon. Early orphan of a father from the East of France, his mother settles in Paris with her children: Jean Marie and his older brother Jacques. He studied literature, followed in Strasbourg and Madrid, plus a long stay in the USA.

He then taught Spanish language and culture in various schools in France, and finally at the Lycée René Cassin in Bayonne (1972-1991) where he was a reference of cordiality and teaching for his students.

Historian and cultural promoter

A great traveler, even in his old age, he knew Europe perfectly and edly visited the former French colonies in the Far East (Indochina) where he traced and identified places where European settlers had lived, including several members of his mother's family. This led him to specialize in his native Soule (Zuberoa) and the Basque Country which, without being a nationalist of any kind, he revered as the land where he had his best known roots and his deepest experiences. Guided by these, he began to write as he approached retirement.

In 1982, with acquaintances, friends and former students, he founded the magazine Ekaina. Revue d' études basques (1982), published by the Association culturelle Amalur in San Juan de Luz, which wanted to fill the gap left by Gure-Herria, disappeared in 1976, although expressly dispensing with any political, philosophical or religious objective of that one. He was its president and has been the magazine's director since 1998, as well as collaborating with other entities such as the association Généalogie et Histoire des Familles Pays Basque, the Cercle généalogique du Pays Basque et Bas-Adour, and similar organizations in other areas.

An antiquarian and painter by hobby, endowed with a great pedagogical vocation, he was a historian in the old style, with a paper card and pen, switched to the computer in the mid-90s. He cultivated the branches Genealogy and Political History, with a clear Girondin, secular orientation. His prose is simple, far removed from the academic pomposity of some of his contemporaries. In the Prefaces to his Armorials he expresses his modest interpretation of the value of working on them:

Comme nous l'avons dit dans le tome I, notre intention dans cet armorial n'est pas seulement de recueillir les armoiries des principales familles du Pays Basque, mais d'évoquer l'histoire des maisons, des familles et des personnes dont nous avons pu trouver trace (.... ) A genealogy is a work always unfinished, because it is always susceptible of being completed, corrected, amended, modified. No one can claim to have carried out an exhaustive work, free of errors. Errors allow for corrections, mistakes lead to additions and all readers will be able to perfect this work.

A believer, well acquainted with the different phases of the French Revolution, its achievements and extremisms, he never adopted the polarized positions and value judgments usual in the Basque counter-revolutionary historiography of his time, generally following members of the clergy such as Abbé Pierre Haristoy (1833-1901) or his contemporary, Abbé Roland Moreau (1918-1990).

He was an open and patient man, in love with the archives since pre-digital times when their consultation was difficult to access, hand-written period handwriting, proof of visual acuity and magnifying glass, such as the nobility files of the Archives Départementales des Pyrénées Atlantiques (ADPA) or the Armory Book of the Kingdom of Navarre before its magnificent publication from the 1980s onwards.

In the end, despite the delicate state of his eyesight, he was able to enjoy Internet access to search and use the Parish and Civil Registers of the ADPA, or the Pôle d'archives of Bayonne.

Publications

Individual, cosmopolitan, touched by the spirit of '68, he liked to direct the construction of his own books and magazine; he did not resort, with few exceptions, to publishers, but to printers and to subscriptions that he collected from people he knew through his own lists. This makes it difficult today to find news of all his publications because they are not registered in current catalogs, as is the case of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Nevertheless, I have been able to compile the following books, pamphlets and articles: 

Books

Baiona Euskal Herri eta hego-Kaskoiniako zigilutegia, (in collaboration with H. Lamant-Duhart), Bayonne: Limarc Liburugintzan, 1981, vol. I.

Armorial de Bayonne, Pays Basque et Sud-Gascogne, (in collaboration with H. Lamant-Duhart), Bidart : Ekaina, 1984, vol. II, 347. Armorial du Pays basque, I. La Soule, (Biarritz) : ed. by the author, 2010, vol. I, 431. II La Basse-Navarre, 2014, 480. III, le Labourd, year ?, 164.

Histoire de la Soule:des origines à la Révolution, St-Jean-de-Luz: Ekaina/Hitzak, 1991, vol. 1, 285.

Histoire de la Soule pendant la Révolution, St-Jean-de-Luz : Ekaina, 2000, vol. 2, 239.

Histoire de la Soule:d'un Empire à l'autre, St-Jean-de-Luz : Ekaina, 2003, vol. 3, 268.

Histoire de la Soule:la Troisième République (1870-1940), Ossas: Ideki, 2006, vol. 4, 322.

Histoire de la Soule :de Pétain à De Gaulle (1940-1969), s.l.. : s. n., 2012, vol. 5, 315.

Articles

Articles and monographic sections in the Dictionary of the "Enciclopedia General Ilustrada del País Vasco Auñamendi" (translated from French by me, Ainhoa Arozamena Ayala), also online as Eusko Entziklopedia:

Mauléon-Licharre, Donostia/SS: Auñamendi, 1989, Vol. XXVII (27) Mars-Mendix.

Zuberoa: Demography. Art. Foral organization. Protohistory. High and Low Middle Ages. Modern Age. Contemporary Age: French Revolution, 2005 and 2006, Donostia/SS: Auñamendi, Vol. LVI (56) Zara-Zuber, 2005, and Vol. LVII Zuber-Zubi (57).

Serie A-Z Personalidades Suletinas, Donostia/SS, Eusko Entziklopedia, 2000-2005.

He resided in several localities of the Basque coast like Biarritz or Anglet where he died on 26/07/2022. Near the end of his life he had received the Gold Medal of the city of Mauléon. He left a rich library of books on Basque and universal themes, among which, next to the Tombe Basque de Colas, the eight volumes princeps of the Histoire des Girondins de Lamartine.