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Mabillon, Jean. "Catalogue des meilleurs livres avec les meilleures éditions, pour composer une bibliothèque ecclésiastique." Traité des études monastiques. Paris, C. Robustel, 1691. (pp. 425-76)

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Introduction

by Paul McDonald, pmcdonald@unca.edu, Assoc. Professor of French, UNC Asheville

This "Catalogue of the best books, with the best editions, for forming an ecclesiastical library" constitutes the final section of Dom Jean Mabillon’s Traité des études monastiques (Treatise on Monastic Studies) published in Paris in 1691. The book is a response to Armand-Jean de Rancé, abbot of La Trappe and founder of the Trappist reform, who had written several books questioning the right of monks to devote themselves to studies, which he saw as leading to pride and as inconsistent with early monastic ideals. It is also a program of studies for young Benedictine monks of the Congrégation de Saint-Maur (Maurists) training to become scholars and to work on the Maurist publishing project, which for over a century and a half produced editions of the Latin and Greek church Fathers, histories of the provinces, dioceses, and individual monasteries of France, literary and archeological histories, collections of ancient and medieval texts, and seminal works on diplomatics, paleography, and numismatics. The catalogue is an implicit rebuke to Rancé not only because it contains numerous volumes by monastic authors and about monastic scholarship but also because the creation of such an ideal library is exactly what Rancé was discouraging in all monastic groups. More importantly, it is a kind of bibliography, for the young scholars to whom Mabillon’s work is addressed, in the various areas named in its subheadings.

Related Links

Traité des études monastiques... [Document électronique]. Gallica.

Discovering the Middle Ages: Monks in 17th-Century France. Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, Saint John's University.

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Last updated 5 June 2007