ABSTRACT
Patristic scholar. As part of the extraordinary circle of Benedictine scholars devoted to the recovery of patristic texts and the elucidation of ecclesiastical history, the Maurist Jean Mabillon made an enormous contribution to the future of historical scholarship. In his fundamental treatise De re diplomatica (1681), Mabillon presented criteria for the critical evaluation of medieval sources through textual analysis, the analysis of handwriting (Latin palaeography), and the assessment of the physical properties of the manuscript itself. Mabillon climaxed the crucial era for the development of humanistic scholarship that had emerged in the mid-fifteenth century among Italian humanists by defining the methodology that historical scholarship would so successfully apply in the succeeding centuries to secular as well as ecclesiastical history.
