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Jean Mabillon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Dom M. D. Knowles
Affiliation:
Regius Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge

Extract

The absence of any adequate modern biography of Mabillon has long left a deplorable gap in the history of French scholarship. Almost immediately after his death his intimate disciple, Dom Thierry Ruinart, wrote a short life which must always remain essential for any estimate of its subject's character, and a more formal notice found its place in Dom Tassin's history of the Maurists. After that, no work of any originality or insight appeared until 1879, when a well-documented study of Mabillon's early life and some of his work was published in a most inaccessible fashion by H. Jadart, who continued his patient investigations for another thirty years. Then, in 1888, Emmanuel de Broglie produced his classical picture of the society of St. Germain-des-Prés and the journeys of Mabillon which, though a work of genuine scholarship and high literary charm, was extremely selective and made no attempt to cover the whole of Mabillon's life and work. De Broglie's volumes, however, soon followed by a similar work on Montfaucon, by their very excellence deterred would-be biographers until in the early years of the present century Dom P. Denis began to make preparatory soundings among the mass of Maurist documents with a view to writing a formal history, which must have contained a long account of Mabillon. His labours issued in a number of valuable articles in the Revue Mabillon, but he died with his main task unaccomplished. Meanwhile Dom Henri Leclercq contributed to the Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie an article, as long as a short book, on Mabillon, as well as numerous other articles on topics connected with his works, but it was not generally known that during the last years of his life, in what time that indefatigable worker could steal from compiling single-handed the last volumes of his great Dictionnaire, he had written what was at least the first draft of a full-scale biography. He succeeded, as is well known, in finishing his encyclopedia a few months before his death, and he also despatched the manuscript on Mabillon to his Paris publisher, but, for an unexplained reason, publication was long delayed and it was only a year ago that the second volume appeared. It is nowhere stated what editorial changes have been made, though it is implied that there has been some abbreviation.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1959

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References

page 153 note 1 T. Ruinart, Abrégé de la vie de Dom Jean Mabillon, Paris 1709. This book, now very rare, was translated by Dom Claude de Vic into Latin as Vita Joannis Mabillonii, Padua 1714. A reprint of the French original, with the title Mabillon appeared in 1933 (Maredsous: collection Pax, XXXV).

page 153 note 2 Histoire littéraire de la Congrégation de Saint-Maur Brussels 1770, 205–70. Mention may also be made of the Histoire de la Congrégation de Saint-Maur by Dom E. Martène, which remained unpublished till the edition of Dom G. Charvin in 9 vols., Ligugé 1928–43. For a short account of the Maurists, see an article ‘The Maurists’ by the present writer in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5 ser., ix (1959).

page 153 note 3 Dom Jean Mabillon Reims 1879; a reprint of 300 copies from Travaux de l'Académie de Reims lxiv.Google Scholar

page 153 note 4 Mabillon [et la Société de l'abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés à la fin du dix-septième siècle], 2 vols., Paris 1888.Google Scholar

page 153 note 5 Bernard de Montfaucon et les Bernardines 2 vols., Paris 1891.Google Scholar

page 154 note 1 D.A.C.L., x. 427 ff. Mention should also be made of the bicentenary volume Mélanges [et documents, etc.], in Archives de la France monastique, Paris and Ligugé 1908. This contains fourteen articles, many of them of unusual merit, by scholars of the calibre of Besse, Cabrol, Delisle, Jadart, Levillain, Omont, etc.Google Scholar

page 154 note 2 Mabillon, 2 vols., Paris 1953, 1957. The publishers, in a prefatory note, say that they are publishing ‘les meilleures pages de son étude’; the phrase is ambiguous, but it is difficult to believe that they have jettisoned very much. There are a few, but only a few, traces of editorial work.

page 154 note 3 Particularly in the later chapters, where sub-editing has left references to an intended treatment of a subject ‘later’ when in fact it has been dealt with on a previous page.

page 155 note 1 Saint-Pierremont is in the modern department of les Ardennes. The fullest account of Mabillon's early years, based on the work of H. Jadart, especially his ‘L'Origine de Dom Mabillon à Saint-Pierremont’ in Mélanges, 1–47, is by Dom Leclercq in D.A.C.L., x. 427 ff.

page 156 note 1 ‘Dom Jean Mabillon, sa probité d'historien’, in Mélanges, 93–103.

page 157 note 1 Denis, Dom. P., ‘Dom Mabillon et sa méthode historique’, in Revue Mabillon VI (1910), 164.Google Scholar

page 157 note 2 Leclercq, Mabillon 78 ff.

page 158 note 1 Leclercq, Mabillon, 234 ff.

page 158 note 2 De Broglie (followed by Leclercq) deals fully and well with these.

page 158 note 3 For these again see de Broglie.

page 158 note 4 Mabillon's journey to Italy was financed by the king, and he travelled ostensibly as ‘buyer’ for the royal library. Cf. ‘Mabillon et la bibliothèque du Roi’, by H. Omont in Mélanges, 107–23.

page 159 note 1 Leclercq deals with all these; de Broglie gives full acounts only of the German and Italian tours.

page 159 note 2 ‘Iter Germanicum’ in Vetera Analecta iv (1685), 3 ff. Colbert arranged the German tour, which was paid for by the royal treasury. Archbishop Le Tellier of Rheims organised the Italian expedition.

page 159 note 3 The best analysis of De Re Diplomatica is that of L. Levillain, ‘Le “De Re Diplomatica”’, in Mélanges 195–252. Cf. also Leclercq, Mabillon 154–80.

page 160 note 1 Leclercq, Mabillon 161–3; A. Poncelet, ‘Mabillon et Papebroch’, in Mélanges, 170–5; de Broglie, Mabillon i. 116–18.

page 161 note 1 De Broglie, Mabillon, i. 126–7, gives the words of the two prelates as follows. Le Tellier: ‘Sire, j'ai l'honneur de présenter à Votre Majesté le plus savant homme de votre royaume’. Bossuet: ‘M. l'archevèque de Reims devrait ajouter: “et le plus humble”’.

page 161 note 2 Leclercq, Mabillon, x. 288–93, 465–71; F. Cabrol, ‘Mabillon et les études liturgiques’, in Mélanges, 147–67.

page 162 note 1 Cf. Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal, iv. vi. (ed. 1848, iii. 555–61); Didio, H., ‘La querelle de Mabillon et de l'abbé de Rancé’, in Revue des sciences ecclésiastiques, LXIII-LXVI (1891–2)Google Scholar; and Bremond, H., L'Abbé tempête, Paris 1929Google Scholar; English trans., The Thundering Abbot, London 1933.Google Scholar

page 164 note 2 Leclercq, Mabillon, 628–58; Ingold, A. M. P., Histoire de l'edition bénédictine de S. Augustin, Paris 1903; Leclercq, D.A.C.L., x. 619 ff. Mabillon wrote the dedicatory epistle to Louis XIV ‘du soir au matin’; it is a sober but glowing tribute to the king's statesmanship.Google Scholar

page 165 note 1 Such, e.g., as the celebrated sentence in the Enchiridion c. 95 (R. de Journel, Enchiridion Patristicum ed. 1922, no. 1925): ‘Nec utique Deus injuste noluit salvos fieri, cum possent salvi esse, si vellent [var. lect. vellet]’.

page 165 note 2 Leclercq, Mabillon 132–8.

page 165 note 3 Dom Germain (cited by Leclercq, Mabillon 712): ‘J'ai eu toutes les peines du monde à le tirer de terre, parce qu'elle étoit toute humide. … Je suis encore tout rompu de cette fatigue’.

page 166 note 1 Mabillon to cardinal Colloredo in Ouvrages posthumes, i (1724), 359. The printed text omits the offending phrases.

page 166 note 2 Leclercq, Mabillon, 751–9; M. Lecomte, ‘La publication des Annales O.S.B.’, in Mélanges, 255–78.

page 167 note 1 The present writer remembers that his first appearance in print, now forty years since, was as a translator of Mabillon; cf. ‘A preface of Mabillon’, in Downside Review, xxxviii (1919) 53–7.

page 167 note 2 Coulton, G. G., Five Centuries of Religion Cambridge 1921, i. 3: ‘There is no monastic historian who for learning and impartiality comes even into the same class as Mabillon’.Google Scholar

page 168 note 1 Mabillon has no ‘philosophy of history’. He shows no trace of the Augustinian concept of world-history, and never moves into the realm of a Vico, a Hegel, a Marx or a Croce, though he was not without a philosophy in general—that of Descartes, as modified by Malebranche. His concept of history was that of the common man, viz., that it was the discovery and presentation of what had happened in the past, and therefore a pursuit comparable to that of a judge summing up a case for the jury, though Mabillon laid the accent on the revelation of the past, while Acton emphasised the moral judgment pronounced on the criminal.

page 169 note 1 Cited by L. Delisle, ‘Dom Jean Mabillon, sa probité d'historien’, in Mélanges 93–103. Cf. Denis, Dom. P., ‘Dom Mabillon et sa méthode historique’, in Revue Mabillon, VI (1910), 164. The last sentence quoted above reads in Latin: ‘Non debet a veritate sejungi pietas: neque haec, si vera ac sincera sit, veritati unquam adversari’.Google Scholar

page 169 note 2 Cited by Leclercq, Mabillon 562.

page 169 note 3 For Mabillon's errors, see especially Leclercq, op. cit., 337–48, 826–7.

page 169 note 4 Ibid., 119–31.

page 169 note 5 Ibid., 680–711; J. Depoin, ‘Une expertise de Mabillon: La filiation des La Tour d'Auvergne’, in Mélanges 126–43, and de Boislisle, A., ‘Le cardinal de Bouillon, Baluze et le procès des faussaires’, editorial note to Saint-Simon, Mémoires XIV. (1899), 533–58.Google Scholar

page 171 note 1 For Dom Estiennot see Leclercq, Mabillon 262–6, and A. Vidier, ‘Un ami de Mabillon, Dom Claude Estiennot’, in Mélanges 281–312.

page 171 note 2 Leclercq, Mabillon 267–9; E. de Broglie should also be consulted.

page 171 note 3 Leclercq, op. cit., 269–75; Jadart, H., ‘Dom Thierry Ruinart’, in Travaux de l'Académie nationale de Reims LXXVII (1884–5).Google Scholar

page 171 note 4 Leclercq, Mabillon 578–605.

page 172 note 1 Leclercq, Mabillon, 583. ‘Parmi ses confrères … d'autres chandsonnèrent:

Frère Denis de la Campagne

A done pris le clef des champs.’

A done pris le clef des champs.’

The play on the family name defies translation.

page 172 note 2 Mabillon's comment was: ‘Je ne comte pas cela pour une faute, n'y ayant rien de plus naturel à un misérable que de tascher à sortir de sa misère’. Leclercq, Mabillon, 584.