Jean Mabillon

The French monk and historian Jean Mabillon (1632-1707) made an important contribution to the science of historical investigation by discovering a way of dating ancient manuscripts.

Jean Mabillon was born on Nov. 23, 1632, the son of a peasant who lived close to Reims. He was a capable student and a religiously devout young man. After spending a year in the diocesan seminary, he became a novice in 1653 in the Benedictine monastery in Reims. He was ordained a priest in 1660, and his quiet scholarly competence prompted his abbot to send him to the abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés in Paris in 1664 to take part in the work of historical research in which the monks there were engaged.

The abbey belonged to a group of reformed Benedictine monasteries called the Congregation of St. Maur. The Maurists were beginning to establish a reputation in Paris for sound historical scholarship. Mabillon's first major project at St-Germain-des-Prés was to collect documents pertaining to the lives of Benedictine saints and to edit these manuscripts into a nine-folio Acta (1668-1701). His grasp of history showed itself in a series of introductions in which he connected each saint's life with the ecclestiastical and civil events that were taking place at that particular time. Mabillon's sensitive interpretations, particularly of the early Middle Ages, received wide attention in French historical circles outside the Benedictine order.

When a Jesuit scholar named Daniel Papebroch attacked the validity of the ancient charters supposedly given by the Merovingian kings to the Benedictine monks for the land on which the Maurist monasteries were built, Mabillon spent 8 years working on a reply: De re diplomatica (1681; On Diplomatics). In it he showed that the age of a manuscript could be determined from its handwriting. With this important work Mabillon established the principles for the modern science of determining manuscript authenticity by means of dating. Later Mabillon was again called upon, this time to defend the legitimacy for monks to do scholarly work. This resulted in his Traité des études monastiques (1691; Treatise on Monastic Studies).

Mabillon traveled widely in Europe in search of manuscripts, but the most profitable trip was to Italy, which led to the publication of Museum Italicum (1687-1689). Throughout his life Mabillon was a monk and a scholar first, and only secondly did he allow himself to become a man of fame and controversy. When he died in St-Germain-des-Prés on Dec. 27, 1707, he had established his place as the greatest historical scholar of the 17th century.

Further Reading

There are no biographies of Mabillon in English. His importance is described in works on the science of history. James Westfall Thompson, A History of Historical Writing, vol. 2 (1942), is especially good.

Mabillon, Jean (1632-1707). French Benedictine monk of the reformed Maurist congregation who has been called the Galileo of historical scholarship. His De re diplomatica (1681) lays down the principles which have ever since guided the critical study of historical documents. Professed at Reims (1654), Mabillon migrated in 1664 to the abbey of Saint- Germain-des-Prés in Paris, already a celebrated centre for historical and textual research, where he edited the works of Bernard de Clairvaux and St Augustine. In his Traité des études monastiques (1691) he defended these activities against the views of the austere Trappist Rancé, for whom learning was an obstacle to monastic perfection.

— Peter Bayley

Jean Mabillon.

Jean Mabillon (23 November 1632 - 27 December 1707) was a French Benedictine monk and scholar, considered the founder of palaeography and diplomatics.

He was born in Saint-Pierremont, Ardennes as the son of Estienne Mabillon (who died in 1692 at age 104) and Jeanne Guérin. At age 12 he entered the Collège des Bons Enfants in Reims and in 1650 entered the seminary. He left the seminary in 1653 and instead became a monk in the Maurist abbey of Saint-Remi. His devotion to his studies there left him ill, and he was sent to Corbie in 1658 to regain his strength. In 1663 he transferred again, to Saint-Denis Abbey near Paris, and the next year to the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, where he met and worked with many other scholars, including Luc d'Achery, Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange, Etienne Baluze, and Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont.

In Saint-Germain, Mabillon edited the works of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (published in 1667), and also worked on the Lives of the Benedictine Saints ("Acta Ordinis S. Benedicti") (published in nine volumes between 1668 and 1701). The later work was undertaken in collaboration with Luc d'Achery, an older scholar and long-lasting librarian of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who had collected the historical materials which Mabillon used. A forward which Mabillon later added used the lives of the saints in order to illustrate the history of the early Middle Ages.

In 1681 Mabillon published De re diplomatica libri sex, which investigated the different types of medieval scripts and manuscripts and is now seen as the foundation work of palaeography and diplomatics. The work brought him to the attention of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who offered him a pension (which he declined), and King Louis XIV. He began to travel throughout Europe, to Flanders, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, in search of medieval manuscripts and books for the royal library.

However, there were opponents to his work. Some of the less scholarly monks in his own abbey criticized his Lives for being too academic, and de Rancé, abbot of La Trappe, declared that he was breaking the rules of his order by devoting his life to study rather than manual labour. He also caused trouble by denouncing the veneration of the relics of "unknown saints," wrote a controversial critique of the works of Saint Augustine, and was accused of Jansenism, but at all times he was supported by the king and the church.

In 1701 Mabillon was appointed by the king as one of the founding members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and in 1704 a supplement to De re diplomatica was published. In 1707 he died and was buried in the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in Paris.

The Mabillon station of the Paris Métro is named after him.

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External links

•  "Jean Mabillon". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Jean_Mabillon. 
• Jean Mabillon: De re diplomatica (1709) - Digital Reproduction (website in German)

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