Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont

Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont
de Tillemont based on portrait by Claude Lefebvre
Born	30 November 1637
Died	10 January 1698 (aged 60)
Education	Petites écoles of Port-Royal
Occupations	Cleric and historian

Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont (30 November 1637 – 10 January 1698) was a French ecclesiastical historian.

Life

He was born in Paris into a wealthy Jansenist family and was educated at the Petites écoles of Port-Royal, where his historical interests were formed and encouraged. At the age of twenty, he began his two monumental works, the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles and the Histoire des empereurs et autres princes qui ont régné pendant les six premiers siècles de l'Église. The first is a history of the first six centuries of the Christian Church. The second is a history of the Roman emperors during the same period.

Tillemont became a priest at the age of 39 and settled at Port-Royal. When Port-Royal was dissolved in 1679, he moved to his family estate at Tillemont, where he spent the rest of his life, pursuing his historical work with great devotion. His Histoire began to issue from the press in 1690 and his Mémoires in 1693. The publication of both works was not complete at the time of his death. The final volumes were completed and published posthumously by his secretary Michel Tronchay. Tronchay also published a biography of Tillemont in 1706 titled Idee de la vie et de l'esprit de M. L. de Tillemont.

Tillemont is cited frequently by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Tillemont's works were among the first to provide critical surveys of the full range of source material. His prose style is considered dry, but he had a reputation for accuracy, detail and conscientiousness. His work was attacked on a large scale by Honoratus a Sancta Maria in his three-volume Réflexions sur les règles et l'usage de la critique (1712–1720).

Selected works

• Histoire des empereurs et des autres princes qui ont régné durant les six premiers siècles de l'Église (6 vol.), 1690–97, 1701, 1738.
• Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles, justifiés par les citations des auteurs originaux avec une chronologie où l'on fait un abrégé de l'histoire ecclésiastique et avec des notes pour éclaircir les difficultés des faits et de la chronologie (16 vol.), 1693–1712.
• Vie de saint Louis roi de France (6 vol.), editor Jules Renouard, Paris, 1847–1851.
• Calendrier des fêtes des saints illustres, 1919.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont — French historian and priest, b. at Paris, 30 November, 1637; d. there, 10 January, 1698; he was educated at the petites écoles of Port-Royal, where Nicole instructed him in logic. His natural inclination was towards history. In reading Baronius he conceived the idea of going back to the sources from which that historian had drawn. At the age of eighteen, therefore, he began to make notes and extracts—a work he continued throughout his life. He spent several years at Beauvais, partly in the seminary and partly with Canon Hermant, who was an authority on the early ages of Christianity. He received Holy orders somewhat late in life, becoming a subdeacon in 1672 and a priest four years later, when he was 39. At that time he resided in Port-Royal, but a little later, in 1679, when its community was dispersed, he withdrew to his small estate at Tillemont, between Montreuil and Vincennes, where he remained till his death twenty years later in 1698, devoting his time to exercises of piety and to historical work. He supplied several of his learned friends with much material for their writings. Thus he spent two years collecting notes on St. Louis for Lemaistre de Lacy, who did not live, however, to make use of them. They were published by the Société de l'histoire de France in 1847 (6 vols.). Tillemont wrote in addition: "Histoire des empereurs et autres princes qui ont régné pendant les six premiers siècles de l'Eglise" (6 volumes in quarto degrees), and "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles" (16 volumes in quarto). Only the first four volumes of each of these works appeared in the life-time of the author. Tillemont's style is dry, but he is an accurate and learned historian.

TRONCHAY, La vie et l'esprit de M. Le Nain de Tillemont (Nancy, 1706); SAINTE-BEUVE, Port Royal, IV.

Bibliography

• Bertrin, Georges Michel (1912). "Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

External links

• Works by or about Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont at the Internet Archive