Denis de Sainte-Marthe
Denis de Sainte-Marthe OSB (24 May 1650 – 30 March 1725) was a French Roman Catholic monk, theologian and historian, who was Superior General of the Congregation of Saint Maur.
Biography
Last of the children of François de Sainte-Marthe, lord of Chant d'Oiseau, and Marie Camus, he belonged to a family originating from Poitou and rich in scholars[1]: his great-uncles Scévole and Louis de Sainte-Marthe had been official chroniclers of France, and both of them, like the children of their eldest, Pierre, Abel and Nicolas-Charles, had written the first editions of the Gallia Christiana; the family was familiarly known as the Samarthani.
He studied at the college of Pontlevoy under the religious of the Congregation of Saint-Maur and earned the reputation of a model student by his diligence in study. He then entered as a novice at the abbey of Saint-Melaine in Rennes in 1668. During the following years he was professor of philosophy and theology at the abbeys of Saint-Rémi in Reims, Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Saint-Denis in Paris; at the same time he wrote and published some works of theology against the Calvinist and Protestant theses which were then spreading throughout France and the Netherlands.
In 1690, the General Chapter of the Congregation appointed him prior of the Abbey of Saint-Julien de Tours. He played a leading role in the conflict between the order and the abbot of La Trappe, Armand de Rancé, who was quite critical of the methods of study that the Benedictines maintained in their monasteries, In order to defend them, Saint-Marthe printed a reply in 1692 which, while it earned him the resounding approval of his brothers in the Order, also aroused the indignation of the abbot's supporters, in particular the Duchess of Alençon, Elisabeth of Orleans, and Bossuet. The following year, Sainte-Marthe returned with a new book on the same subject, which was published without the consent of the assembly, prompting the chapter to remove him from the post of prior and send him to Saint Germain-des-Prés, where he was put in charge of the abbey's extensive library. It was while he was there that he wrote the life of Cassiodorus, chancellor to King Theodoric in the second century.
A year later he was reinstated and sent to Rouen to administer the abbey of Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle, where he spent five years. Here again he was caught up in the controversy when the Jesuits accused the republication of the works of St. Augustine, which the Mauritian Thomas Blampin had just published, of supporting positions close to Jansenism; this episode gave rise to some brief pamphlets9,10 which St. Martha wrote to defend his orthodoxy. It was at this time that, with the help of his former theology professor, Guillaume Bessin, he published the life of St. Gregory the Great; on the occasion of its republication, three years later, he asked Pope Clement XI to be relieved of the abbatial dignity in order to pursue his studies with greater freedom and fewer distractions, but his request was not granted. In 1699, he was transferred to the same position at Saint-Ouen where he spent another six years.
Recognition of the merits of his literary work led the General Chapter of 1705 to transfer him to Paris so that he could devote himself to his studies with greater ease, assuming successively during the following triennia the office of prior of the Blancs-Manteaux, of Saint-Denis, of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and again of Saint-Denis, and from 1708 onwards that of vice-superior general of the Congregation. In 1710, he was charged with the elaboration of what was to be his most famous work: at the request of Cardinal de Noailles, the Assembly of the French clergy endowed him with four million livres to undertake the writing of a new edition of the Gallia Christiana, an encyclopedia of the ecclesiastical history of all the dioceses of France which members of his family had published 55 years earlier. With a new conception, more extensive and better documented, using the recompilations left by Claude Estiennot and with the help of several colleagues, among them Étienne du Laura, Claude Bohier, Edmond Martène, Ursin Durand, Barthélemy de la Croix, Félix Hodin, Jean Thiroux and Benoit de Clou, he published in 1715 the first volume, which included the dioceses of Albi, Aix, Arles, Avignon and Auch; In 1720, he completed the second volume on Bourges and Bordeaux, at the same time as he was named President of the Assembly of the Clergy and Superior General of the Congregation of Saint-Maur; five years later, he published the third volume, which dealt with the sees of Cambrai, Cologne and Embrun. He died the same year and his work was continued by his colleagues in the congregation.
See also
Works
- Gallia christiana (1685)
- Recueil de quelques pièces qui concernent les quatre lettres écrites à M. L'Abbé de la Trappe (1693)
- La vie de Cassiodore, chancelier & premier ministre de Theodoric le Grand & de plusieurs autres rois d'Italie (1694)
- Histoire de S. Grégoire le Grand, pape et docteur de l'église, tirée principalement de ses ouvrages (1697)
Notes
- ↑ Paul de Longuemare, Une Famille d'Auteurs aux XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles: Les Sainte-Marte. Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1902.
References
- Philippe Le Cerf, Bibliothèque historique et critique des auteurs de la Congrégation de S. Maur, pp. 458-465 (1725).
- Jacques Lelong, Bibliothèque historique de la France, tomo III, p. XCI (1761).
- Bernhard Pez, Bibliotheca Benedictino-Mauriana (1716) II. Augusta. pp. 309-337.
- René Prosper Tassin, Histoire littéraire de la Congrégation de Saint-Maur, pp. 445-469 (1770).
External links
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- 1650 births
- 1725 deaths
- 17th-century French historians
- 18th-century French historians
- 17th-century Latin writers
- 18th-century Latin writers
- 17th-century Roman Catholic theologians
- 18th-century Roman Catholic theologians
- Benedictine writers
- Congregation of Saint-Maur
- Roman Catholic theologians
