Works
Their historical and critical school produced a number of works of scholarship which still are of permanent value. The foundations of this school were laid by Dom Tarisse, the first superior-general, who in 1632 issued instructions to the superiors of the monasteries to train the young monks in the habits of research and of organized work. The pioneers in production were Ménard and Luc d'Achery.
The full Maurist bibliography contains the names of some 220 writers and more than 700 works. The lesser works in large measure cover the same fields as those in the list, but the number of works of purely religious character, of piety, devotion and edification, is very striking. What was produced was only a portion of what was contemplated and prepared for.
Some of their most important contributions are:
- a revision of Gallia Christiana,
- L'art de vérifier les dates,
- l'Histoire littéraire de la France.
The French Revolution cut short many undertakings, the collected materials for which fill hundreds of manuscript volumes in the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris and other libraries of France. There are at Paris 31 volumes of Berthereau's materials for the Historians of the Crusades, not one in Latin and Greek, but in the oriental tongues; from them have been taken in great measure the Recueil des historiens des croisade whereof 15 folio volumes have been published by the Académie des Inscriptions. There exist also the preparations for an edition of Rufinus and one of Eusebius, and for the continuation of the Papal Letters and of the Concilia Galliae. Dom Cafflaux and Dom Villevielle left 236 volumes of materials for a Trésor généalogique. There are Benedictine Antiquities (37 vols.) (Claude Estiennot de la Serre), a Monasticon Gallicanum and a Monasticon Benedictinum (54 vols.) Of the Histories of the Provinces of France barely half a dozen were printed, but all were in hand, and the collections for the others fill 800 volumes of manuscripts. The materials for a geography of Gaul and France in 50 volumes perished in a fire during the Revolution.
The output was prodigious, coming from a single society. The qualities that have made Maurist work proverbial for learning are its critical tact and its thoroughness.
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The discovery of Pennsylvania’s coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)