Tillemont, Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de

TILLEMONT, LOUIS-SÉBASTIEN, LE NAIN de. – French scholar and historian, b. in Paris on 30 November 1637, d. there on 10 January 1698. Educated in Paris in a Jansenist milieu, he was soon attracted to historical studies.

After a long period of indecision, it was only in 1672 that he consented to receive the subdiaconate, and four years later the priesthood. Still residing in Paris, in 1679 he was forced to flee together with the other “solitaries” of Port-Royal and withdrew to Tillemont (hence the name), in the vicinity of Paris. From there he undertook various journeys, including one to Holland. In the final period of his life he returned once more to Paris.

His works include the Histoire des empereurs et des autres princes qui ont regné durant les six premiers siècles de l'église (6 vols., Paris 1690–97, the first 4; the other two posthumous, 1701 and 1738; 2nd ed., inaccurate and incomplete, Brussels 1707–39; 3rd, published simultaneously in Venice and Brussels from 1732 onward), and the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles (16 vols., the last incomplete; the first 4, Paris 1693–96, the others posthumous, from 1698 to 1712; 2nd ed., Venice 1732–39), apparently conceived as a single work, but later separated because of the inability to reconcile Christian and secular history. T. reveals himself as a scholar of broad learning, but his is the patient work of a compiler and “reconciler” of sources, to which he sometimes lends excessive credence and from which he only rarely departs in order to express thoughts and opinions, which he encloses in parentheses. Compared with Mabillon, he has the advantage of a more systematic organization of the historical framework, although he relies exclusively on literary sources. He also wrote a Vie de st Louis roi de France, left incom-

plete, continued by I. De Sacy and then by Filleau de la Chaise, and published between 1847 and 1851. Other writings remained unpublished, and much of his work passed into the works of G. Hermant, T. du Fossé, d'Arnauld, and Lambert.