Martin Bouquet

Dom Martin Bouquet (born August 6, 1685 in Amiens , † April 6, 1754 in Paris ) was a French cleric and historian. His main work Rerum gallicarum et francicarum Scriptores ( Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France ) is a collection of works by Gallic and West Frankish historians up to the year 987.

Life

In 1706 Bouquet made his religious vows in the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Faron in Meaux . Shortly after his ordination , he was sent to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés monastery in Paris as a librarian , whose collection at the time comprised 60,000 books and 8,000 manuscripts. With his knowledge of the Greek language , he supported Bernard de Montfaucon in editing the works of John Chrysostom . He himself worked out a new edition by the Jewish historian Flavius ​​Josephus and was already well advanced when he learned that the Dutchman Siwart Haverkamp was pursuing the same goal. Bouquet then left his material to Haverkamp, ​​which he included in his edition.

Bouquet's main achievement consists in the publication of the collection Rerum gallicarum et francicarum Scriptores . In 1729 he had completed the first two volumes when he and a few other monks from Saint-Germain were exiled to the Saint-Jean monastery in Laon after they had refused to accept the bull Unigenitus Dei filius Pope Clement XI. to subjugate. In 1735 he was able to return, first to Argenteuil , then to the monastery of the Blancs-Manteaux at Notre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux in the 4th arrondissement of Paris , from where he could better monitor the progress of his project. Between 1738 and 1752 he published the first eight volumes of the work, which has since grown to 24 volumes.

literature

• Michael Ott: Martin Bouquet . In: Catholic Encyclopedia , Vol. 2 (1913)
• Marie-Nicolas Bouillet (Ed.): Dictionnaire Bouillet .