BARBIER DE MONTAULT, XAVIER-MARIE-JOSEPH. – French scholar, born at Loudun on 6 February 1830, died at Blaslay on 29 March 1901. Having gone to Rome at the age of 23, he remained there for a long time and travelled through almost the whole of Italy, France, and Germany, visiting museums, studying monuments, and investigating archives.
The writings he published number more than 4,
000. Many of them, collected in 16 volumes, appeared at Poitiers between 1889 and 1902 under the title Oeuvres complètes de Mgr X
M.-J. B. de M. Prélat de la Maison de Sa Sainteté. They contain inventories of the churches of Rome, the Vatican Palace, and the pontifical Museums; they also deal with such subjects as papal law, popular devotions, hagiography, ceremonies relating to the conclave, and papal etiquette.Among those of an archaeological character, besides the Tableau raisonné des pierres et marbres antiques employés à la construction des monuments de Rome (n. d.) and the volume Les Musées et Galeries de Rome - Catalogue général de tous les objets d'art qui y sont exposés (1870), mention should be made of Les églises de Rome étudiées au point de vue archéologique, the Description de la Basilique de S. Paul hors-les-murs à Rome (1866), Les souterrains et les trésors de S. Pierre à Rome ou description des objets d'art et d'archéologie qu'ils renferment (1866), and Antiquités chrétiennes photographiées par M. Ch. Simelli cataloguées et décrites (1870). Several articles on Épigraphie des Catacombes appeared in the first volume of the Revue de l'art chrétien (1857). Also worthy of note are the Traité pratique de la construction, de l'ameublement et de la décoration des églises, published in Paris in two volumes in 1872, and the Traité d'iconographie chrétienne, likewise published in Paris in two volumes in 1890. Finally, mention should be made of the study Le Martyrion de Poitiers. Comptérendu des fouilles et de l'ouvrage du r. p. De La Croix (1855) and the extensive paper in the Revue d'art chrétien, 40 (1896), on Les mosaïques des églises de Ravenne (from the 5th–7th centuries), whose historical, archaeological, and artistic importance he brought to light.