MABILLON, JEAN. – Benedictine of the Congregation of S. Mauro (v. MAURINI), born at St-Pierremont (Reims) on 23 November 1632, died at St-Germain-des-Prés on 27 December 1707.
Admitted to the monastery of St-Rémy (1653), he subsequently transferred, for reasons of health, to Nogent and to Corbie, where he was ordained a 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, summoned him to his side, at the centre of Maurine studies, and M. remained there until his death.
In 1667 he undertook the grandiose edition of the Acta SS. Ord. S. Benedicti, published in 9 vols. between 1668 and 1701 (a 10th vol. remained in manuscript at the Bibliothèque nationale of Paris). Subsequently he wrote the three books De liturgia gallicana (Paris 1685), the Iter germanicum, published in vol. IV of the Vetera analecta (there 1685), the Museum italicum, in 2 vols. (there 1687–89), the Traité des études monastiques (there 1691), an archaeological treatise, of the utmost importance for its time, printed under the title Eusebii Romani ad Theophilum Gallum epistola de cultu sanctorum ignotorum (there 1698). Between 1703 and his death he edited the first 4 vols. of the Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti, subsequently completed by the Maurines (6 vols., there 1703–39). Other writings were published posthumously by V. Thuillier, Oeuvres posthumes de M. et de Ruinart (3 vols., there 1724).
But the work of widest resonance is represented by the 6 books De re diplomatica (the IV was, however, compiled by dom Germain), published in Paris in 1685, together with a supplement published in 1704 in response to the refutation by P. Germon (there 1703). The work Papebroch (v.); in refuting him, M. exhausted the entire field of diplomatics and set both this discipline and palaeography upon a scientific path.
Book I comprises general notions, the classification of documents, the study of external features, and the classification of scripts; II examines internal features and chronology; III focuses on cartularies and notitiae; IV constitutes an excursus on the ancient chanceries of the kings of France; V and VI comprise tables, examples, and applications. The work was received with the broadest approval, first and foremost by Papebroch; in 1709 the 2nd ed. appeared, again in Paris; in 1789, the 3rd, in Naples. Despite its gaps and not a few erroneous assessments, it represents the foundation of diplomatic and palaeographical studies, and many observations of a general and methodological character, advanced for the first time by M., still retain their value today; moreover, the work contains the most extensive treatment ever made of Merovingian diplomatics.