Admitted to the monastery of St-Rémy in 1653, he later moved, for reasons of health, to Nogent and 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, to the center of Maurist studies, where Mabillon remained until his death.
In 1667 he began the grand edition of the *Acta SS. Ord. S. Benedicti*, published in 9 volumes between 1668 and 1701 (a 10th volume remained in manuscript at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris). He later wrote the three books *De liturgia gallicana* (Paris 1685), the *Iter germanicum*, which appeared in vol. IV of the *Vetera analecta* (ibid. 1685), the *Museum italicum* in 2 volumes (ibid. 1687–89), the *Traité des études monastiques* (ibid. 1691), and an archaeological treatise of great importance for its time, published under the title *Eusebii Romani ad Theophilum Gallum epistola de cultu sanctorum ignotorum* (ibid. 1698). Between 1703 and his death he prepared the first four volumes of the *Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti*, later completed by the Maurists (6 volumes, ibid. 1703–39). Other writings were published posthumously by V. Thuillier in *Oeuvres posthumes de M. et de Ruinart* (3 volumes, ibid. 1724).
But his most influential work is the six-book *De re diplomatica* (though the fourth book was compiled by Dom Germain), published in Paris in 1685, with a supplement issued in 1704 in response to P. Germon’s refutation (ibid. 1703). The work originated from Papireto’s objections (v.), and in refuting them Mabillon drew on the entire field of diplomatics, setting both this discipline and paleography on a scientific footing.
The book includes general principles, the classification of documents, the study of extrinsic features, and the classification of scripts; the second book examines intrinsic features and chronology; the third focuses on cartularies and charters; the fourth is a digression on the ancient chanceries of the kings of France; the fifth and sixth contain tables, examples, and applications. The work was met with widespread acclaim, first and foremost from Papireto himself; a second edition appeared in Paris in 1709, and a third in Naples in 1789. Despite certain gaps and no small number of erroneous judgments, it remains the foundation of diplomatic and paleographic studies, and many of Mabillon’s general and methodological observations retain their value to this day. Moreover, the work contains the most comprehensive treatment ever devoted to Merovingian diplomatics.