medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

"John B. Wickstrom" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>...in the 860s, the monks of Glanfeuil, the large Loire monastery supposedly
founded by St. Maur, fled to Paris. There they took refuge at St. Pierre des
Fosses. The relics of St. Maur were of course taken along, and lodged in that
house. 


later known as "Saint-Maur-des-Fosses," one of several very important
Parisianesque houses which have disappeared more or less without a physical
trace (thereby depriving us of, among other things, any detailed knowledge of
what the "indignenous" "Romanesque"/Early "Gothic" architecture of the
Parisian basin actually looked like).

i meant to check my copy of the new edition of the Cartulary of St. Maur's at
home, but.... yet another Senior Moment.  as i recall it has a longish
introduction which might be of more use on this question.

>Later they were transferred, I think in the 17th century, to St.
Germaine des Pres

"Germain" of Auxerre fame.

"Ms Brenda M. Cook" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>"Dom [Pierre] Hyacinthe Morice, pre^tre, Religieux Be'ne'dictine de la
Congre'gation de S. Maur" who from 1742 brought out his massive 3 vol work
entitled "Memoires pour servir de preuves a l'histoire ecclesiastique etr
civile de Bretagne ....and followed this up
with his comparably massive two volume "Histoire  eccle'siastique et civile de
Bretagne ..." in 1750.

yep. 

typical of these guys who were heavy into sublimation.

they *really* knew how to crank out the pages.

>It goes without saying that many of the documents he transcribed did not
survive the events following 1789 so his work - however limited in terms of
commentary

but, any "commentary" would mostly be useful for historiographic reasons 
--what it might tell us about DOM Morice's interpretation of the original
sources.

which latter are the *real* gold.

from what i've seen (not much), Mabillon and his sucessors essentially set up
a network of reformed houses --virtually every major ancient Benedictine
foundation it France, it would seem (you can spot their "new" architecture a
mile away)-- and then proceeded to use that network of 
far-flung correspondants to supply the writing scholars with
information/copies of original sources about whatever topic might be at hand. 
also, some of the fellows sent out from Paris were trained historians
themselves, who sometimes --as may be the case with your Dom Morice-- became
quite excellent local historians. 

obviously Mabillon's *massive* history of the Benedictine order, with its
thousands of citations/editions of original documents, could not have been put
together without a *lot* of help of this sort.  guy must have been writing
letters all day long and into the night.

in addition to the very substantial published material the Maurist Machine
cranked out, there survives an huge number of mss, from histories of various
places/regions to "simple" collections of copies of charters.

in the Chartres archives i was constantly comming across 17-18th cc. copies of
charters done by variuous Benedictines (whom i assumed to have been living
down the hill, in the newly reformed house of St. Peter's).

i take Chartres to be typical in this regard, and assume that the same could
be found in most every departemental archive in the country.
 
in addition, there is, apparently, a spectacular collection of many dozens of
folio ms volumes of copies of the Marmoutier charters now housed in the BN. 
Many of these have never been published and their availability via microfilm
(which "technology" has to been invented by some descendant of the Marquis de
Sade) is a priceless resource.

>I wondered what a Benedictine was doing at this task but now you have set it
in context.

well, Abbot Rancé, the cistercian contemporary of Mabillon didn't approve of
such activities for monks, but, thankfully for us, M. & company went ahead
anyway.

there is an 18th c. Histoire de la Congregation de Saint-Maur (or something
like that) --which i once had a copy of in a 70s reprint but never got around
to reading-- which goes a long way toward laying out the "context," at least
from the point of view of a member of the order during its "silver age."

DOM Henri Leclercq's two volume biography of Mabillon (which i've also had a
copy of for decades and have yet to do more than dip into) seems to *really*
contextualize the phenomenon.  partly based on Mabillon's quite astonishly
voluminous correspondance.

interesting question.

life is short, alas.


best to all from here,

christopher

Christopher's Book Room
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