Histoire littéraire des Bénédictins de Saint-Maur, Vol. 3 (1683-1723) (review)

Nearly fifteen years ago, Philippe Lenain conceived the monumental task of compiling a list of all literary contributions of the members of the Benedictine Congregation of Saint-Maur. The Maurists earned high praise from their contemporaries for their achievements in most academic realms, and Lenain's work emphasizes these contributions to the literature and scholarship of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The third volume of Lenain's compilation catalogues the monastic authors from 1683 to 1723. Volume 4 will cover Maurists from 1724 to 1787, and a fifth and final volume will include an index of all volumes.

Lenain's compilation builds on the work begun by the Maurist Don René Prosper Tassin in 1770. Tassin set out to create a complete list of Maurist scholarship, but the political and religious atmosphere of the late-eighteenth century rendered his work incomplete and extensively edited. Other historians such as Ulysse Robert in the nineteenth century and Dom Yves Chaussy in the twentieth have added their own editions. Lenain has attempted to tie all of these contributions together in one collection. Each entry has a short biography of the monastic author; a list of his publications, manuscripts, and correspondence; and bibliographic references. Unlike Tassin, who ranked his writers by seniority, Lenain has chosen to list his by date of profession—in other words, the moment that the author's written works would become contributions for the Congregation and not just those of an individual scholar. (Each monk receives a unique catalog number based on his date of profession.) In deference to the contributions of the previous historians, Lenain included some religious who did not seem to produce any scholarly product but who figured on the lists provided by Tassin, Robert, and others. For example, volume III begins with the entry of M. Pierre Denis, a commis of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, who was included in Dom Chaussy's compilation but seems to have left no literary contributions.

Lenain's index of Maurist authors and their works has tremendous importance for the history of the Congregation as well as for the history of the period in general. This work highlights the outstanding achievements made by members of this religious order to history, philosophy, science, and many other academic fields. The Maurists were lauded by their contemporaries for these accomplishments, but as noted above, the previous attempts to catalog these works have remained incomplete. Also significant are Lenain's entries that include some of the collaborative works between Maurists and secular scholars. The Congregation's members did not keep their academic findings to themselves; they believed that knowledge should be shared with the rest of the scholarly community for the good of all. Yet, although Maurists interacted with the academic world beyond their cloister walls, Lenain's volumes demonstrate that this did not weaken their devotion to their religious vocations. In his entry on Dom Martin Bouquet, the Maurist historian most notable for completing the Collection des Historiens des Gaules et de la France at the behest of royal government of France, Lenain reiterates Tassin's comments that Bouquet's involvement with secular society did not dampen his devotion to his religious life. Thus, whereas Lenain's collection provides an invaluable resource for researchers, it also demonstrates how the Maurists used scholarship not to escape the obligations of their religious vows but as a means of fulfilling the labora command of their Benedictine founder.