Saint-Maur
The men who made the Congregation, and how to find them.
Between 1618 and 1790, several thousand men made profession in the Congregation of Saint-Maur. They did not promise stability in one house, as the older Benedictine custom required, but in the Congregation as a whole: the general chapter could thus send them from one province to another, wherever a community, a school or a scholarly undertaking needed them. All received the same formation, in the humanities, in Scripture, in the Fathers and in the principles of chant, in the houses of study that each province maintained. The ablest went on to Saint-Germain-des-Prés or the Blancs-Manteaux for the great editions.
The Congregation kept the record of its members with the same care as its charters. The register of professions, the necrologies of the houses and the bibliographies of writers that its monks compiled themselves now make it possible to follow almost every one of them. This page sets out those instruments; it forms the second book of the Conservatoire’s classified bibliography.
As early as 1716, the Melk Benedictine Bernhard Pez drew up the list of Maurist writers; dom Philippe Le Cerf took it up in 1726, and in 1770 Dom René-Prosper Tassin gave the Histoire littéraire de la Congrégation de Saint-Maur, which is still authoritative. The supplements of Ulysse Robert (1881) and of dom Ursmer Berlière (1908-1932) completed it; between 2006 and 2018 Philippe Lenain produced its modern recasting.
Lives and bibliographies of the Maurists gathered by the Melk Benedictine Bernhard Pez, friend and correspondent of Montfaucon: the Austrian view of the congregation, a generation before Tassin.
The first repertory of Maurist writers, published outside France by a religious of the congregation; it precedes and complements Tassin.
Bio-bibliographical dictionary of Maurist writers, arranged by date of death; the basic reference work on the authors of the congregation.
A supplement to Tassin by the archivist Ulysse Robert, who adds authors and titles omitted.
Alphabetical repertory of Maurist authors and their works, convenient for a first search.
First volume of the new supplement prepared by Dom Henry Wilhelm and published by Dom Ursmer Berlière; the following volumes (up to 1932) have not been found online.
A modern recasting, author by author, of the bibliography of Maurist writers, with a last volume of indexes by abbey: the most complete tool for knowing who wrote what, and in which house.
German translation of Tassin’s Histoire littéraire, a witness to the reception of the Maurists in the Empire; the online record wrongly bears the French title.
The great bio-bibliographical repertory of Maurist writers since 1618, compiled by a confrere of the congregation; the starting point of any research on the authors.
Each professed monk received a serial number in the register of professions of the Congregation, with the place and date of his profession. Dom Yves Chaussy edited it in 1959 and completed it with a biographical repertory in 1991; the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes has made of it a database, Matriculae, which follows each monk from house to house. The necrology of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, published by dom Vanel in 1896, adds the notices of those who died in the mother house.
Notices of the religious who died at Saint-Germain, drawn from the abbey’s necrology: an indispensable biographical complement to the register of professions.
Edition of the register of professions of the congregation (1618-1789), completed by the Répertoire biographique of 1991 (record linked above): the standard list of names.
Second volume of Dom Chaussy’s work: biographical notices of the religious, a complement to the Matricule of the congregation.
Biographical database based on the register of professions of Saint-Maur: for each monk, place and date of profession, houses, death, works and surviving letters (e.g. the entry for Dom Simon Mopinot, no. 72073).
The scholars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés wrote to the whole of learned Europe, from the Bollandists of Antwerp to the librarians of Florence and the Benedictines of Melk. The letters they received are at the Bibliothèque nationale de France; part of them were published in the nineteenth century, and the critical edition of the correspondence of the Pez brothers, in Vienna, now gives its German side.
Edition in three volumes of the letters exchanged by Mabillon and Montfaucon with Magliabechi, Noris and other Italian scholars; volumes II and III, on Internet Archive, are linked above.
An account of the learned life of Saint-Germain from 1664 to 1707, drawing on Mabillon’s correspondence; volume II, on Internet Archive, is linked above.
A collection that includes, besides Bayle’s letters, letters of Benedictines of Saint-Maur (1652-1741) drawn from the Copenhagen holdings.
Sequel to the previous work, centred on Montfaucon and his circle, from his letters; volume II, on Internet Archive, is linked above.
Original letters of Maurists kept in the Royal Library of Copenhagen, published by Emil Gigas: the congregation seen from the North.
Open-access critical edition of the learned correspondence of the Benedictines of Melk, who corresponded with Saint-Germain-des-Prés; letters in Latin, summaries and commentary in German.
Edition and study of a learned correspondence contemporary with the last volumes of the Spicilegium; it shows d’Achery, librarian of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, at the heart of a network for the exchange of texts.
1632-1707
Founder of diplomatics. His De re diplomatica (1681) gives the rules by which a genuine charter can be told from a forgery: script, formulas, seals, dating. In the Traité des études monastiques (1691), he defended against the Abbé de Rancé the legitimacy of study in the cloister.
1655-1741
He created the word and the science of palaeography with the Palaeographia graeca (1708), edited Saint Athanasius and Saint John Chrysostom, and gathered in L’Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures (1719-1724) a great illustrated corpus of the monuments of antiquity.
Portraits: dom Jean Mabillon, engraving by John Pass, 1815, National Library of Wales (public domain); dom Bernard de Montfaucon, engraving by Jacques-Nicolas Tardieu, published by Michel Odieuvre about 1755-1765, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (CC0); via Wikimedia Commons.
Around them worked dom Luc d’Achery, librarian of Saint-Germain and first organiser of studies, dom Thierry Ruinart, dom Edmond Martène and dom Ursin Durand, travellers and editors of texts, dom Denis de Sainte-Marthe, dom Martin Bouquet, dom Antoine Rivet, dom Joseph Vaissète, dom François Bedos de Celles. The studies devoted to them are arranged below in the order of their birth.
Biographical and bibliographical entry in the great German-language music encyclopaedia; the usual point of entry for musicologists.
A thesis on a Jansenist Maurist exiled in the Low Countries, editor of Saint Anselm; it sheds light on the religious tensions within the congregation.
A collection of studies and unpublished documents gathered by the Benedictines of Ligugé for the bicentenary of Mabillon.
A classic biographical essay in English on Mabillon by the great Benedictine historian of Cambridge.
Collected studies on the correspondence of Mabillon and the Maurists, their borrowings from the Bibliothèque du roi and their relations with booksellers; a reference work on the Maurist learned network.
Opening address of the session held at the Académie des inscriptions for the tercentenary of Mabillon’s death, which presents his critical method as the historian’s “discourse on method”; the same issue gathers several studies on Mabillon.
A study in Spanish, in a monastic journal, on the place of Mabillon in the congregation.
A recent article that qualifies the image of a purely objective Mabillon, from the case of the canonesses of Remiremont; a good example of the present critical view of the Maurist method.
Reconstruction of a Maurist’s tour of the libraries and archives of the Midi in the seventeenth century; relevant to the houses of the province of Toulouse.
Portrait of the scholar by a great Hellenist, stressing the birth of Greek palaeography and the genesis of the 1708 work; full text freely available.
Two volumes of proceedings devoted to Montfaucon, born near Limoux: his training in Languedoc, his work as Hellenist and antiquary, his place in the congregation.
Study of how Montfaucon listed, dated and used the Greek manuscripts for his editions, devoted for the most part to the Fathers of the Church. The best recent point of entry into the Greek workshop of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Portrait of Dom Vaissète and a reading of his Histoire, notably of his critical judgement on the Albigensian crusade.
German collection of dates, documents and interpretations on Dom Bedos, evidence of the interest of organ builders across the Rhine (ISBN 3-925366-85-7).
A documented biography bringing together the two sides of the work, gnomonics and the organ (ISBN 978-2-917212-06-6). Also relevant to the page on L’Art du facteur d’orgues.
A second collective volume from Bordeaux, devoted to the monk and his milieu (ISBN 978-2-86781-801-1).
A philosophy thesis, part of which deals with Dom Léger-Marie Deschamps and the Congregation of Saint-Maur; it shows the intellectual diversity of the Maurists of the Enlightenment.
Presentation of the author’s thesis on Pernety, a figure stretched between the Enlightenment and illuminism, from the southern voyage to the Illuminés d’Avignon.
Short presentation by Pierre Chaunu of Pernety’s path, from Berlin to the Falklands and Avignon.
Most of the engraved portraits of the Maurists are now in the public domain; several museums make them available under an open licence.
Engraved portrait of the first superior general, the true organiser of the congregation; open-access image.
Engraved bust portrait of Mabillon, under a CC0 licence.
German index of early engraved portraits (more than 280,000); the record of Mabillon after Bertrand’s medallion is free. The same resource on Europeana.
Some twenty engraved portraits, the tomb slab and the bust at Saint-Germain, the house where he was born, the works.
Small categories (three files at most, mainly BEIC frontispieces); no free portrait of d’Achery or Martène is found there.
Engraving after Geuslin, in good definition.
Portrait engraved for Dreux du Radier’s L’Europe illustre.
Engraved portrait of Montfaucon, free of rights.
Portraits (Carnavalet, Rijksmuseum, Wellcome) and plates from L’Antiquité expliquée and the Monumens de la monarchie françoise.
The lists of the priors of each house, appointed by the general chapters and the diets, are given with the notice of the house.
The Maurist housesThe Maurist sourcesThe works of Saint-Maur
