Monceaux, Paul

MONCEAUX, PAUL. - French historian and archaeologist, b. at Auxerre on 29 May 1859, d. at Sceaux on 7 Feb. 1941.

A professor of the history of Latin literature at the Collège de France in Paris, where in 1907 he succeeded Boissier, he devoted himself to the study of the literature of Christian Africa and published in 7 vols., from 1901 to 1923, a Histoire littéraire de l'Afrique chrétienne from Tertullian to St. Augustine. The importance of this work lies in the fact that the greater part of it (the last 4 vols.) is devoted to the examination of Donatism. The last volume, the VIIth, deals more particularly with the struggle waged by St. Augustine against this heresy. Every anti-Donatist writing of the bishop of Hippo is analyzed minutely by M. and for each the exact date of composition is offered along with the circumstances that determined its drafting. A professor at the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes, he had notable contributions in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles lettres, and was a collaborator of the Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, of the Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, of the Revue de philologie, of the Revue archéologique, of the Journal des savants, of the Revue des deux mondes; among his other works the following are remembered: Les proxies grecques (1884); La Grèce avant Alexandre (1892); Les Africains: étude sur la littérature palenne d'Afrique (1894); Examen critique des documents relatifs au martyre de st Cyprien (1901); Les actes de stc Crispine, martyre à Théveiste (1903); Enquête sur l'épigraphie chrétienne d'Afrique (1903); Un ouvrage du donatiste Fulgentius (1907); L'inscription des martyrs de Douggo et les banquets des Martyrs en Afrique, in Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1908, pp. 87-104; Un couvent de femmes à Hippone au temps de st Augustin, in Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles lettres, 1913, pp. 570-595; Cuicul chrétien, in Memorie della Pont. Accad. Rom. di Archeol., 3rd series, part I (1923), pp. 89-112; Le manichéen Faustus de Milev (1924); S. Martin (1926); St-Agustin et st-Antoine, in Miscellanea Augustiniana, II, Rome 1931, p. 61 ff.; St Jérôme. Sa jeunesse, l'étudiant, l'ermite (1932).

Silvio Furlani