Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Jean Mabillon

MABILLON, Jean (1632–1707), the learned and discriminating historian of the Benedictine order, was born at the village of Saint Pierremont, Champagne (now in the department of Ardennes), on November 23, 1632. He received his early education from an uncle who held the post of village curé in the neighbourhood, and afterwards he went to Rheims, where, in 1653, he entered upon his noviciate in the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Remy, taking the vows in the following year. The following four years were spent at various houses of the order, to which he was sent on account of his health, impaired by excessive study. From 1658 to 1663 he was at Corbie, and in 1664 he assisted Chantelon at Saint Denis in the preparation of a new edition of the works of St Bernard. Shortly afterwards he was removed to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and charged with the task of editing materials which had already been amassed for a general history of the Benedictine order. While engaged on this work (Acta Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti in sæculorum classes distributa), the publication of which, in 9 vols. folio, extended from 1668 to 1701, he made several journeys, for literary research, into Germany and Italy, as well as into the provinces of France; amongst the more important of the numerous monographs to which his investigations gave rise, the work De Re Diplomatica, which appeared in 1681, deserves special mention (see Diplomatics). Mabillon died at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, on December 27, 1707.

For a complete list of his works reference may be made to Bayle’s Dictionnaire, or to the Biographie Générale. They include, besides those mentioned above, Vetera Analecta, 1675–85 (a work similar in character to the Miscellanea of Baluze); Animadversiones in Vindicias Kempenses, 1677 (in which he claims the Imitatio for Gersen); De Liturgia Gallicana, 1685; Museum Italicum, 1687–89; and Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti, 6 vols. fol., 1703–39.