SAINTE-BEUVE, CHARLES-AUGUSTIN de. Portrait.
of s. Romaric, a monk of Luxeuil; there was a monastery of monks and one of nuns. Lendino Bodo, bishop of Toul, founded the monastery of Bonmoutier south of Etival.
The Benedictine abbey of Senones was founded in 640 by s. Gondeberto, archbishop of Sens, who gave it the name of Senoria. It was suppressed by the Revolution; the abbey church, transformed into a parish church, was rebuilt in Romanesque style in 1860; the monastic building, reconstructed in the 18th century, is now private property. One of the last abbots was d. Calmet, who died in 1757. The monk Richer belonged to the monastery; in the 13th century he wrote the chronicle known as that of Senones. The abbey of Moyenmoutier was founded by s. Idulfo, bishop of Trier, at the end of the 12th century. The name derives from its position among the four abbeys of St-D., Bonmoutier, Etival, and Senones. Etival is situated at the outlet of the Valange valley; it was originally a priory of the abbey of Ardlau (v. STRASBURGO); in 1146 it became a Premonstratensian abbey, suppressed in 1790. The ancient abbey church suffered greatly in the last war; it is in 12th-century Cistercian style; the apse was rebuilt in 1516, and the naves are divided by pillars.
In the 16th century, given the long period during which the see of the diocese of Toul was vacant, the abbots of these monasteries assumed an almost episcopal jurisdiction and, in the 18th century, each was erected into an abbey nullius.
The diocese was created by Pope Clement XIV in 1777 through the dismemberment of the diocese of Toul, with the ancient monastic territories of St-D., Etival, Senones, and Moyenmoutier. Suppressed in 1801, it became part of the diocese of Nancy; it was re-established by Pius VII in 1822. It was initially a suffragan of Trier; since 1822 it has been under the metropolitan see of Besançon. Bishop of St-D. from 1849 to 1876 was Msgr. L. Caverot, later cardinal archbishop of Lyon.
The Cathedral, known as the “Grande-Eglise,” was blown up with dynamite in November 1944 by the Germans; the façade with its two towers, erected in 1711, remained intact. The interior has three naves, the two smaller ones erected after the fire of 1155, with Romanesque pillars; the apse has five chapels, while the choir and transept date from the 14th century, and the side chapels from the 15th and 16th centuries. The frescoes that decorated the walls dated from the 16th century and were destroyed. The adjoining cloister dates from the 14th century; south of it stands the church of Notre-Dame, known as the “Petite-Eglise,” a typical 12th-century Romanesque church in the Rhenish style, built of red limestone. It has three naves; in the façade, the portico and bell tower appear to be earlier. The church of S. Martino, burned in 1895, was rebuilt. Noteworthy is the Municipal Library, formed from the collections of the religious communities both of the city and of the region, especially those of Etival, Moyenmoutier, and Senones, together with donations from Taurant, Elbel, and Baldensperger. It possesses 132 manuscripts, some illuminated, 139 incunabula, and more than 60,000 volumes.
Around 1495, the Gymnasium Vogesiense was established by several scholars in St-D., and one of the first printing presses in Lorraine was founded there; from it came the Cosmographiae intro-
ductio, in which the name America was given to the New World for the first time.
Enrico Josi
SAINTE-BEUVE, CHARLES-AUGUSTIN de. — French writer, born in Boulogne-sur-Mer on 23 December 1804, died in Paris on 4 October 1869, where he had lived almost all his life. He began by studying medicine, which he soon abandoned for literature, drawn into the circle of the new Romantic ideas by his enthusiasm for V. BALL, HUGO, whom he exalted in several critical articles in the Globe as the standard-bearer of the new literary tendencies.
He made his début as a critic (Tableau de la poésie française au XVIe siècle, 1827-28) and as a poet (Poésies de Joseph Delorme, 1829; Consolations, 1830). For a time he was a Saint-Simonian under the influence of P. Leroux; then, after having defended 18th-century atheism, he came under the influence of Lamennais and the ab. Gerbet. The echo of these spiritual conflicts is found in the novel Volupté (1834), with which S.-B. effectively bade farewell to his unfortunate career as poet and novelist, reserving for himself that of critic. His activity was multifaceted and innovative: against the dogmatism of the classicists, he raised the banner of liberal criticism, based no longer on moralistic or traditional schemes but on historical and psychological research. Devoted to the idea of truth, in order to reach it he even goes beyond the aesthetic datum; his is the thought: « Le vrai, le vrai seul; et que le beau et le bien s'en tirent ensuite comme ils pensent ». But the more he exercised his curiosity and investigative spirit upon life and history, the more he was compelled to set ideas aside and turn to the human being, to character, the only reality that truly interested him. Thus, in his broadest and most organic work (Histoire de Port-Royal, 5 vols., Paris 1840-60), devoted to the development of Jansenism, while following the thread of the historical narrative, he dwells variously upon one figure or another, ultimately giving us a gallery of characters whose physiognomy is portrayed in unforgettable fashion. Originating in a course of lectures delivered at the University of Lausanne in 1837 and enriched by subsequent research, this history of Port-Royal undoubtedly belongs among the great historical monuments of the last century. S.-B.’s other unified work is Chateaubriand et son groupe littéraire (1860), likewise the fruit of a course of lectures given at Liège in
2659. S
B. would undertake no further unified work. A professor at the Collège de France and later at the Ecole Normale, and appointed senator (1865), he remained for almost forty years attached to literary journalism, moving from the Globe to the Constitutionnel, which published the series Causeries du lundi, and from the Moniteur to the Temps. The articles were gradually collected in numerous volumes: Portraits littéraires (1832-64); Portraits de femmes (1844); Portraits contemporains (1846); Causeries du lundi (1851-72); Nouveaux lundis (1863-70). His study of Virgil (1857) should also be recalled. Like Balzac, with whom he may in a certain sense be compared for the fecundity of his human interests, he attempted to establish not a comédie but a histoire naturelles des esprits, attempting to « répandre », in his own expression, — dans cette infinie variété de la biographie littéraire quelque chose de la vue lumineuse et de l'ordre qui préside à la distribution des familles naturelles en botanique et en zoologie. But the better part of S.-B.’s spirit could not respond to so great a programmatic and scientific effort: it always rebelled against classifications the more he tended to recognize their necessity. Thus his vast work — to which must be added the posthumous Mes poisons (1896) and the enormous Correspondance, still incomplete — remains wholly on the fertile and unpredictable terrain of curiosity, inspired discovery, and critical and human enthusiasm.The Histoire de Port-Royal was placed on the Index by decree of 13 January 1845 because of the false ideas it presents and defends against religion and the Catholic Church, and because of the false perspective from which it considers Jansenism, presenting it as an ascetic and moral reaction in favor of a return to the primitive Church.