Background
Jean Mabillon was born on November 23, 1632 in Saint-Pierremont, Ardennes, France, the son of a peasant who lived close to Reims.
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Jean Mabillon was born on November 23, 1632 in Saint-Pierremont, Ardennes, France, the son of a peasant who lived close to Reims.
At the age of 12 he became a pupil at the Collège des Bons Enfants in Reims. Having entered the seminary in 1650, his dedication to his studies left him ill, as he was a capable student and a religiously devout young man.
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.
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. He died in St-Germain-des-Prés on Dec. 27, 1707.
He made an important contribution to the science of historical investigation. Mabillon established the principles for the modern science of determining manuscript authenticity by means of dating (example, his work De re diplomatica (1681; On Diplomatics)). Mabillon was one of the founding members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and published his famous De re diplomatica. Concerned often with "distinguishing genuine documents from forgeries" the work is now seen as the foundation work of palaeography and diplomatics.
The Mabillon station of the Paris Métro is named after him.
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Quotations:
Mabillon writes:
"I do not deny that in fact some documents are false and others interpolated, but all of them should not be dismissed for that reason. Rather, it is necessary to devise and hand down rules for distinguishing genuine manuscripts from those that are false and interpolated. . .. I undertook this task after long familiarity and daily experience with these documents. For almost twenty years I had devoted my studies and energies to reading and examining ancient manuscripts and archives, and the published collections of ancient documents. . .. I compared and weighed them with one another that I might be able to compile a body of knowledge which was not merely scanty and meager, but as accurate and as well-tested as possible in a field which had not been previously investigated. "
Quotes from others about the person
According to Fritz Stern, writing in 1956, Mabillon was the "greatest historical scholar of his century".
