QUENTIN, HENRI. - Benedictine historian and critic, first abbot of the pontifical abbey of St. Jerome in Urbe, b. at St-Thierry, in the diocese of Reims (France), on 7 Oct. 1872, d. at Rome on 4 Feb. 1935. He spent some years in the diocesan seminary, then entered (1894) the abbey of Maredsous (Belgium), where
Eisleben (Saxony) on 9 July 1809, d. at Tübingen on 21 Dec. 1889. Q. occupied himself, among other things, with the study of the Swabian Jura.
In his works one encounters sure indications of his religious faith: he attributes to God's creative and regulating action the formation and development of the inorganic and organic world, and he notes and admires the concordances of the Mosaic narrative with science (Schöpfung der Erde und ihre Bewohner, Stuttgart 1882, p. 8).
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He went to Paris (1910-11) and to Spain (1912-13) to study and photograph the most important manuscripts of the Vulgate, with an apparatus devised expressly by him for the Commission. During the war of 1914-18 he lived again in Paris without interrupting his work. Having returned to Rome, he gave its fruit by preparing in the palace of St. Callixtus in Trastevere, the seat of the Commission for the Vulgate, his well-known Mémoire sur l'établissement du texte de la Vulgate (Collectanea Biblica, 6, Rome 1922), a fundamental work for the future course of the revision itself and also for the development of textual criticism. According to the principles established in this book, he published, under his own name, the first two volumes of the critically established Hieronymian version: Lib. Genesis (Rome 1926), Lib. Exodi et Levitici (ibid. 1929).
In the meantime, Q. had become an effective member of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology (23 June 1923) and had begun (1926) lectures on ecclesiastical history, hagiography and liturgy at the Pontifical Institute of Archaeology. On 6 Feb. 1930 he was appointed by Pius XI relator general of the historical section of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, then established. With H. Delehaye (v.) he edited the critical edition of the Hieronymian Martyrology, published in the Acta SS. Novembris, II, II (Brussels 1931).
On 21 Oct. 1933 he moved from the abbey of Sts. Maurus and Maurus of Clervaux (Luxembourg) to the abbey of St. Jerome in Urbe, founded with the bull Inter praecipua of June 1933, with a group of monks to whom Pius XI entrusted the task of continuing the work of revising the Vulgate, under the direction of Q. Appointed abbot of the new pontifical monastery on 10 March 1934, he died there suddenly less than a year later.
Of extraordinary erudition, a keen and profound critic, especially in the study of manuscripts, he drew the attention of scholars to the necessity of rigorous principles, so as not to throw open the doors to the subjective element of internal criticism. For the revision of the Vulgate he established a method of classifying manuscripts and editions which, after controversies, was generally accepted by scholars.
Besides the important works mentioned above, and many articles in journals (especially in Revue bénédictine), in miscellanies and in encyclopedias, he published: Jean Dominique Mansi et les grandes collect. concil., étude d'hist. littér. (Paris 1900); Les martyrol. hist. du moyen âge. Etude sur la formation du Martyrol. romain (ibid. 1908); Boninus Mombritius. Sanctuarium seu vitae Sanctorum (ibid. 1910), in collaboration with D. Brunet; Notice histor. sur l'abbaye de Solesmes (Tours 1924); Essai de critique textuelle (Paris 1926).