MABILLON, JEAN. - Benedictine of the Congregation of St. Maur (v. MAURINI), b. at St-Pierremont (Reims) on 23 Nov. 1632, d. at St-Germain-des-Prés on 27 Dec. 1707.
Received into the monastery of St-Rémy (1653), he subsequently moved, for reasons of health, to Nogent and to Corbie, where he was ordained priest on 27 March 1660. In July 1663 he was assigned to St-Denis, but the following year Dom Luc D'Achery, abbot of St-Germain-des-Prés, called him to his side, at the center of Maurist studies, and here M. remained until his death.
In 1667 he undertook the grand edition of the Acta SS. Ord. S. Benedicti, published in 9 vols. between 1668 and 1701 (a 10th vol. has remained in manuscript at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris). Subsequently he wrote the three books De liturgia gallicana (Paris 1685), the Iter germanicum, which appeared in the IV vol. of the Vetera analecta (ibid. 1685), the Museum italicum, in 2 vols. (ibid. 1687-89), the Traité des études monastiques (ibid. 1691), an archaeological treatise, most important for those times, printed under the title Eusebii Romani ad Theophilum Gallum epistola de cultu sanctorum ignotorum (ibid. 1698). Between 1703 and his death he edited the first 4 vols. of the Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti, completed later by the Maurists (6 vols., ibid. 1703-39). Other writings were published posthumously by V. Thuillier, Oeuvres posthumes de M. et de Ruinart (3 vols., ibid. 1724).
But the work of widest resonance is represented by the 6 books De re diplomatica (the IV, however, was compiled by Dom Germain), published in Paris in 1685, plus a supplement published in 1704 in reply to the confutation of P. Germon (ibid. 1703). The work originates from the observations of Papebroch (v.), to rebut whom M. exhausts the entire field of diplomatics and sets this and paleography on the scientific path.
The I book comprises the general notions, the classification of documents, the study of extrinsic characteristics, the classification of scripts; the II examines the intrinsic characteristics and chronology; the III dwells on the cartularies and on the notitiae; the IV constitutes an excursus on the ancient chanceries of the kings of France; the V and VI comprise tables, examples, applications. The work was received with the widest approval, first of all that of Papebroch; in 1709 the 2nd ed. appeared, again in Paris; in 1789, in Naples, the 3rd. Despite its gaps and not a few erroneous assessments, it represents the basis of diplomatic and paleographic studies, and many observations of a general and methodological character put forward for the first time by M. still retain their value today: moreover the work contains the most extensive treatment ever made of Merovingian diplomatics.
Bibliography7 works
Alessandro Pratesi