ABSTRACT
You may still visit the place where Jean Mabillon, historian and virtual founder of the sciences of palaeography and diplomatics, was born and grew up. In a row of houses that look out on a farmyard just east of the church in the village of Saint-Pierremont in the Ardennes is a door that has a little marble plaque over it bearing the words: “JEAN MABILLON. NÉ LE 23 NOVBRE 1632.” The village is far from any tourist route, and the attempts of enthusiasts to make it an attraction to a public that knows “Mabillon” only as the name of a Paris subway station have been doomed to failure.
