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Presidential Address: Great Historical Enterprises II. The Maurists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

M. D. Knowles
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Extract

Ayear ago our theme was the work of the Bollandists. Their name suggests immediately, to all acquainted with European historiography, the name of another body of religious, many of them the contemporaries of Henskens and Papebroch, and it would be impossible to omit from even the shortest list of great historical enterprises the achievement of the Maurists. The two bodies of men and their work, nevertheless, have little in common save an equal devotion to accurate scholar-ship. What impresses us in the history of Bollandism is its continuity of spirit and undeviating aim over more than three hundred years, during which a very small but perpetually self-renewing group has pursued a single narrowly defined task, which is still far from completion. With the Maurists, on the other hand, it is the magnitude, the variety and the high quality of the achievement that strikes the imagination. While the Bollandists, a small family in a single house, have in three centuries produced in major work no more than a row of sixty-seven folios, the Maurists, in a little more than a hundred years, published matter enough to stock a small library, and left behind them letters, papers and transcripts which have been used and exploited by scholars for nearly two centuries since. Indeed, it would be both impossible and alien to the scope of our interests to attempt the briefest survey of Maurist scholarship in its entirety, and my remarks to-day will be confined to their publications on European history after the decline of the Roman Empire. Who were the Maurists, and wherein lay their peculiar excellence?

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 9 , December 1959 , pp. 169 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1959

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References

page 169 note 1 There is no adequate and critical modern history of the Maurists. Dom P. Denis, who hoped to write one, contributed valuable articles to the early numbers of the Revue Mabillon (then devoted largely to Maurist history), but did not live to fulfil his promise. The fundamental literary sources are those of the Maurists themselves, some of which have only been printed in recent years: Martène, Dom E., Histoire de la Congrégation de Saint-Maur, ed. Charvin, Dom G. (9 vols., Ligugé, 1928–1943)Google Scholar ; the same writer's La vie des justes, ed. Heurtebize, Dom B. (3 vols., Ligugé, 1924–1926)Google Scholar ; the Nécrologe…de Saint-Germain-des-Prés, ed. Varel, J. B. (Paris, 1896)Google Scholar ; Tassin, Dom P., Histoire litteraire de la congrégation de Saint-Maur (Brussels, 1770)Google Scholar, completed by U. Robert (Paris, 1881) and U. Berlière and H. Wilhelm (Paris, 1908). The vivid studies by E. de Broglie of Mabillon and Montfaucon (see below) are selective, though scholarly (Paris, 1888, 1891); the account by Schmitz, Dom P. in his Histoire de l'Ordre de Saint Benoît, v (Maredsous, 1949), pp. 266–77Google Scholar, is short. For manageable lists of Maurist writings, see article ‘Maurists’ in Catholic Encyclopedia and ‘Mauristes’ in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique and (less manageable) D[ictionnaire d]A[rchéologie] C[hrétienne et de Liturgie]. Leclercq, Dom H. has much relevant material in Mabillon (2 vols., Paris, 1953–1957)Google Scholar.

page 170 note 1 Cf. Schmitz, P., Histoire de l'Ordre de S. Benoît, iv (1948), pp. 21–52Google Scholar.

page 170 note 2 The best account of this is in Bremond, H., Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, iii, ‘La conquete mystique’ (Paris, 1921)Google Scholar.

page 171 note 1 For this movement in England, see Douglas, D. C., The English Scholars (2nd ed., London, 1951)Google Scholar.

page 172 note 1 For Mabillon's appreciation of Dom Tarrisse, see preface to Annales O.S.B., vi. Cf. Rousseau, F., Un promoteur de l'érudition française bénédictine: Dom Grégoire Tarrisse (Bruges, 1924)Google Scholar, and Stein, H., ‘Le premier Supérieur général de la CongréGation de Saint-Maur: Dom Grégoire Tarrisse’, in Mélanges [et documents…de Maiillon] (Paris, 1908), pp. 49–89Google Scholar. Cf. also Bishop, E., ‘Richelieu and the Maurists’, in Downside Review, xxx (1911), 271–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Liturgica Historica (Oxford, 1918), pp. 462–74.

page 173 note 1 Nicole (cited by Leclercq, , Mabillon, p. 566Google Scholar, from Bremond, , L'Abbé Tempête, p. 183)Google Scholar, wrote: ‘II n'y a pas quarante religieux dans la congrégation [de quatre mille] qui fassent une vie d'étude.’ This would seem to be the source of Leclercq's own statement(Mabillon, p. 545): ‘les Mauristes comptaient une quarantaine de savants sur un total de trois [sic] mille religieux environ’.

page 174 note 1 The locus classicus is de Broglie, E., ‘Mabillon et la Societé de l'Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés à la fin du dix-septième stick’ (2 vols., Paris, 1888), pp. 52 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 174 note 2 Mabillon described the German tour in Vetera Analecta, iv, pp. 3 ff., ‘Iter Germanicum’, and the Italian experience in Iter Italicum (1687). Both E. de Broglie and H. Leclercq give full accounts.

page 176 note 1 For Mabillon, the essential books are: Ruinart, Dom T., Abrégé de la vie de Dom Jean Mabillon (Paris, 1709Google Scholar ; Latin translation, Padua, 1714; reprint of French life as Mabillon, Maredsous, 1933); E. de Broglie,Mabillon (see preceding note i, page 174); above all, H. Leclercq, art. ‘Mabillon’ in DAC andMabillon (above, note 1, page 169). For a short sketch, see Knowles, M. D., ‘Jean Mabillon’, in forthcoming number of Journal of Ecclesiastical History (10, 1959)Google Scholar.

page 177 note 1 The best analysis of De Re Diplomatica is that of L. Levillain in Mélanges, pp. 195–252.

page 178 note 1 The words of Traube, L. may be taken as representative (Vortesungen, ed. Lehmann, P., München, 1909, i, p. 22)Google Scholar : ‘So sehr ist darin alles monumental und nicht für den Augenblick, sondern für die Unsterblichkeit geschrieben.’

page 178 note 2 Cf. H. Leclercq in DAC, x (i). 529–30. ‘Il n'avait pas eu de devancier dans cette œuvre [sur l'office gallican] et on peut dire qu'il n'a pas eu d'imitateur.’ But had Leclercq forgotten Edmund Bishop?

page 179 note 1 Five Centuries of Religion (Cambridge, 1921), i, p. 3Google Scholar : ‘There is no monastic historian who for learning and impartiality comes even into the same class as Mabillon.’

page 180 note 1 For Martène, see art. by H. Leclercq in DAC.

page 180 note 2 For Dom Martin, see Martène, Dom E., Histoire de la Congrégation de Saint-Maur, vii. 131–58Google Scholar, and Bremond, H., Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France, vi (Paris, 1922), pp. 177–226Google Scholar.

page 180 note 3 For Montfaucon, see de Broglie, E., Bernard de Montfaucon et les Bernardins (2 vols., Paris, 1891)Google Scholar.

page 184 note 1 Langlois, C. V., Manuel [de bibliographie historique] (2 vols., Paris, 1904), ii, pp. 296–7Google Scholar, remarks: 'On a pu, depuis, perfectionner ces ouvrages; mais les grandes Hgnes n'en ont pas bougé: les disciplines auxiliaires du moyen âge ont gardé jusqu'á nos jours la physionomie que les Mauristes leur ont donnée

page 185 note 1 For this, see DAC. xi. 2190–204.

page 185 note 2 Brief notes on the Gallia Christiana are in Langlois, , Manuel, ii, pp. 297–8Google Scholar, and Halphen, L., Initiation [aux études d'histoire du moyen âge] (Paris, 1946), pp. 102–3Google Scholar. Cf. also Pécheur, , ‘Précis sur l'histoire du Gallia Christiana’, in Bulletin de la Société archéologique de Soissons, xv (1884), 127Google Scholar.

page 185 note 3 For the Recueil, see Langlois, , Manuel, ii, pp. 298–99, 374–75Google Scholar, and Halphen, , Initiation, pp. 67–68Google Scholar.

4 There is a short account of the re-creation of the various Instituts and Academies, 1795–1832, in Langlois, , Manuel, ii, pp. 371–72Google Scholar.

1 Langlois, , Manuel, ii, pp. 299–300, 375–76Google Scholar ; Halphen, , Initiation, pp. 126–27Google Scholar. There is an interesting account of the development of the work by Langlois in the introduction to vol. xxxvi (1927).