TILLEMONT, LOUIS-SÉBASTIEN, LE NAIN de. — French scholar and historian, b. in Paris on 30 Nov. 1637, d. there on 10 Jan. 1698. Educated in Paris in a Jansenist environment, he soon felt drawn to historical judgments.
After long hesitation, he did not consent to receive the subdiaconate until 1672 and the priesthood four years later. Having settled again in Paris, in 1679 he was forced to flee with the other “Solitaires” of Port-Royal and retired to Tillemont (whence his name), in the vicinity of Paris. From there he made various journeys, including one to Holland. In the last period of his life he returned once more to Paris.
Notable among his works are 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 remaining two posthumous, 1701 and 1738; 2nd ed., incorrect and incomplete, Brussels 1707–39; 3rd simultaneously in Venice and Brussels 1732 ff.) and the *Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclesiastique des six premiers siècles* (16 vols., the last incomplete, Paris 1693–96 the first 4, the others posthumous from 1698 to 1712; 2nd ed. Venice 1732–39), conceived, it seems, as a single work but later separated due to the inability to reconcile Christian and secular history. T. reveals himself as a scholar of vast learning, but his is a patient work of collecting and reconciling sources, to which he sometimes lends excessive credence and from which he rarely departs to express thoughts and opinions, which he encloses in parentheses. Compared to 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 unfin