The ''Monasticon Gallicanum'' is a collection of 168

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ar ...

s of topographical views, with two maps, representing 147 French

monasteries A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which m ...

belonging to the reformist

Benedictine The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...

Congregation of St. Maur. Commissioned by , the engravings were prepared between 1675 and 1694, but not published in full until 1870.

Creation 1675–1694

The members of the Congregation of St. Maur had a strong interest in monastic history and produced many notable

historiographical Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...

works on individual religious houses There was a need however for a work covering all the monasteries of the Congregation.Monasticon Gallicanum, 1870, vol 1 (text only); preface (Google Books)
/ref> Dom Michel Germain, a monk at the

Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns. The co ...

and a friend of

Jean Mabillon Dom Jean Mabillon , (; 23 November 1632 – 27 December 1707) was a French Benedictine monk and scholar of the Congregation of Saint Maur. He is considered the founder of the disciplines of palaeography and diplomatics. Early life Mabillon w ...

, undertook the task. From 1675 he wrote individual historical texts about, and commissioned the accompanying plates of, all the Maurist monasteries, but although by the time of his death in 1694 the plates had been engraved and most of the texts written, the work did not proceed to publication. The texts remained in manuscript, in the form of booklets and loose leaves. Over time they became disordered and some were lost; those surviving eventually found their way to the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

. As for the engravings, which Dom Germain commissioned from several different unknown engravers, a small number of prints were made at the time, which circulated loose, and the copper plates were then dispersed without trace. A very few sets were assembled and bound by different individuals from 1694 through the 18th century; these however included various additional prints foreign to the set.

Publication 1870–1871

Achille Peigné-Delacourt, an antiquary and collector of mediaeval documents, realised the importance of Germain's illustrations, since so many of the original buildings had been lost in the interval. In 1860 he published reproductions of the engravings relating to the monasteries in the province of

Reims Reims ( ; ; also spelled Rheims in English) is the most populous city in the French Departments of France, department of Marne (department), Marne, and the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, 12th most populous city in Fran ...

, with the promise to publish the complete set of the engravings after taking care to remove the other illustrations that had been added to them by the various amateur collectors who had preserved them. The task of verifying which engravings were genuinely among those commissioned by Germain was undertaken by Louis Courajod, archivist and palaeographer attached to the Department of Prints and Photographs of the Bibliothèque Nationale (then the ''Bibliothèque Impériale'') for the complete edition of the illustrations of the ''Monasticon Gallicanum'' published in 1870–71, which successfully reproduced the prints at half-size without losing sharpness of detail. A couple of facsimile editions were published in the later 20th century.For example, as reviewe
here
/ref>

Creation 1675–1694

Publication 1870–1871

Notes and references

Further reading