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Bernard de Montfaucon

Bernard de Montfaucon (Soulatgé, 16 gennaio 1655 – Abbazia di Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 21 dicembre 1741) è stato un monaco benedettino, paleografo, archeologo, [[]], [[]] e [[]] francese. Fu uno studioso ed un erudito, curò l'edizione delle opere dei Padri della Chiesa; ed a tal fine fondò una nuova disciplina, la paleografia; è inoltre considerato uno dei fondatori della moderna archeologia.

Vita

 

La mano emblematica dei misteri (da Antiquitas explanatione et schematibus illustrata)

 

Esempio di facsimile di Montfaucon tratto da Codex Colbertinus 700 (designated by ℓ 1 on the list Gregory-Aland), with text of Matthew 18:10

Montfaucon was born January 13, 1655, in the castle of Soulatgé, a small village in the south Corbières, in the present department of Aude. After one year he was moved to the castle of Roquetaillade, residence of his family, then he was sent to Limoux. In his seventh year he was sent to the secondary school to learn Christian doctrine.

Montfaucon served in the French army as volunteer and participated in the Franco-Dutch War in 1673. He was a captain of grenadiers and made two campaigns under the orders of Turenne, participated in the Battle of Marienthal and fell ill in Saverne (in Alsace). Because of his infectious illness he made a vow to Notre-Dame of Marceille, to give one hundred livres to her chapel and to become a Benedictine, if he was to go back to his country, as a result of her intervention.

After the death of his father in the Château de Roquetaillade, he took the Benedictine habit in 1675, in the monastery of Bream in Toulouse; there he learned several ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, and Coptic.

In 1687 Montfaucon was called to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and he started to work on an edition of the works of the Greek Church Fathers.

In 1705 he examined and described the manuscripts of the Fonds Coislin, in Bibliotheca Coisliniana (Paris, 1705). In 1708 in Palaeographia Graeca Montfaucon became the first to use the term "palaeography".^[1] The work illustrates the entire history of Greek writing. It contains Montfaucon's discussions of variations in Greek letter forms, the use of abbreviations in Greek manuscripts, and the process of deciphering archaic writing. It was Montfaucon's special interest. In this work he often cited Greek manuscripts in texts of Athanasius of Alexandria, Origen, and John Chrysostom.^[2] The book dealt so comprehensively with the handwriting and other characteristics of Greek manuscripts that it remained the leading authority on the subject for almost two centuries.^[3]

In 1714 Montfaucon published the fragments of Hexapla of Origen.^[4]

He published 15 volumes of L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures between 1719 and 1724. An English translation of this work was published in 1721–25 under the title Antiquity Explained and Represented in Diagrams. The work contained copperplate folio engravings of classical antiquities. It included a depiction of the "Barberini Vase", more commonly known as the "Portland Vase". This book is published in English under the title Antiquities.^[5] The materials used in this work were taken from the manuscripts deposited in French libraries. It contains many illustrative facsimiles, though they are engraved in a rather coarse way.

In 1719, Montfaucon was named by Philippe d'Orléans to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. In 1719 after the death of the Jesuit father Michel Le Tellier, confessor to the late Louis XIV, Bernard de Montfaucon took his place as confessor to the young Louis XV.

Bernard de Montfaucon died on December 21, 1741 in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Dom Bernard de Montfaucon avait commencé ses travaux d'érudition grecque et latine bien avant son départ pour l'Italie (1680) qu'il parcourut en tout sens à la recherche de manuscrits pour la publication des œuvres de saint Jean Chrysostome, et où il fut un moment procureur de son ordre à la suite de la mort de son prédécesseur Dom Estiennot. À Rome, le pape Innocent XII qui avait facilité son voyage le reçut très honorablement, mais il fut en butte à la jalousie de Zacagni sous-bibliothécaire au Vatican et soutint des luttes contres les jésuites^[6]. Enfin, il rentra en France en juin 1701.

En 1719, il avait été nommé par le Régent, membre de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, en l'absence de place vacante. C'est cette même année qu'il étudia la sépulture mégalithique de Cocherel (Eure).

À la mort (1719) du père Michel Le Tellier, jésuite, ancien confesseur de Louis XIV, Bernard de Montfaucon fut élu à sa place.

Opera

Dom Bernard de Montfaucon è il fondatore della paleografia con la pubblicazione, nel 1707, della Paleographia Graeca. E' quest'opera che viene usata per la prima volta la parola Paleografia dandole un significato ampio, che inglobava la codicologia insieme allo studio delle scritture librarie.

Distingue due grandi categorie di scritture: l'onciale, fatta di maiuscole, di cui prende il nome il nome in prestito dai latinisti e che lui conosce male, dal momento che ve n'erano pochi esempi a Parigi, e le scritture legate, fatte di minuscole, che invece conosce bene, grazie al Gabinetto del re ed alla Collezione del Duca di Coislin.

Il a fondé l'archéologie en tant que science en appuyant l'histoire non seulement sur les textes, mais aussi sur les monuments et vestiges du passé.

La comprensione dell'architettura antica fa dei progressi determinanti, soprattutto con la avec la publication à partir de 1719 par Bernard de Montfaucon de L'Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures^[7] en 19 volumes qui présente pour la première fois l'antiquité grecque et l'antiquité romaine en commun. C'est durant cette période (1723) qu'il explore le site d'Olympie avec l'archevêque de Corfou.

Present scholars agree that he created a new discipline, palaeography, and presented it in a perfected way.^[8][9]

Montfaucon is largely responsible for bringing the famous Bayeux Tapestry to the attention of the public. In 1724, the scholar Antoine Lancelot discovered drawings of a section of the Tapestry (about 30 feet of the Tapestry's 231 feet) among papers of Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, a Norman administrator. (These drawings of the Tapestry's images "classicized" the otherwise cruder Anglo-Norman style by adding shadows and dimensionality to the figures.) Lancelot, unsure of what medium these drawings depicted, suggested that they might be tomb relief, stained glass, fresco, or even a tapestry.^[10] When Lancelot presented Foucault's drawings in 1724 to the Academie Royal des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris, they attracted the attention of Montfaucon, who subsequently tracked down the textile in the drawings with help from Benedictine colleagues in Normandy.^[11] This is often regarded as the modern "discovery" of the Bayeux Tapestry, which had gone on quiet display annually in the Bayeux Cathedral for possibly centuries. Montfaucon published the Foucault drawings in the first volume his Les Monumens de la Monarchie Francoise [sic]. In anticipation of volume 2 of Les Monumens, Montfaucon employed the artist Antoine Benoit and sent him to Bayeux to copy the Tapestry in its entirety and in a manner faithful to its style, unlike Foucault's "touched up" renditions which were more suitable to 18th-century French tastes. Emory University art history professor Elizabeth Carson Pastan criticizes Montfaucon for his "Norman Triumphalist" point of view in dealing with the story of the Tapestry, despite the fact that he asserted that one should trust "the best historians of Normandy." She does state, however, that modern scholars are indebted to him for his process of examining many accounts of the Norman Conquest in interpreting the Tapestry, and his highlighting of the Tapestry's ambiguity and enigma ^[12] (such as why Harold Godwinson went to Normandy in 1064 or the identity of the elusive Aelfgyva).

Nell'arte

Opere

• Analecta graeca, sive varia opuscula graeca inedita (Parigi, 1688)
• S. Athanasii opera omnia (Parigi, 1698)
• Diarium italicum (Parigi, 1702)
• Bibliotheca Coisliniana (Parigi, 1705)
• Collectio nova patrum graecorum (1706)
• Palaeographia Graeca, sive, De ortu et progressu literarum graecarum (Paris, 1708)
• Bibliotheca Coisliniana olim Segueriana, (Parigi, 1715)
• L'antiquité expliquée et representée en figures (15 voll., Parigi, 1719-[1724)
• Les monuments de la monarchie française (5 voll., Parigi, 1729-1733)
• S. I. Chrisostomi opera omnia (Parigi, 1718—1738; nuova edizione 1735—1740)
• Bibliotheca bibliothecarum manuscriptorum nova (2 voll., Parigi, 1739)

Bibliografia

1. ^ Bernard de Montfaucon et al., Palaeographia Graeca, sive, De ortu et progressu literarum graecarum, Paris, Ludovicum Guerin (1708); André Vauchez, Richard Barrie Dobson, Adrian Walford, Michael Lapidge, Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2000), Volume 2, p. 1070
2. ^ Books on Palaeography from the Arnold Semeiology Collection
3. ^ Bernhard Bischoff, Latin palaeography: antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 1.
4. ^ "Bernard de Montfaucon", in Marie-Nicolas Bouillet and Alexis Chassang (eds.), Dictionnaire universel d'histoire et de géographie, 1878.
5. ^ Template:BBKL
6. ^ il écrira qu'à Rome il n'avait rien de plus à faire que surveiller les jésuites
7. ^ L'Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures sur le site de la Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
8. ^ W. Wattenbach, Anleitung zur griechischen Palaeographie (Leipzig 1895), p. 4.
9. ^ Bruce M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 1.
10. ^ Lancelot. Explication d'un Monument de Guillaume le Conquerant
11. ^ Elizabeth Carson Pastan. "Montfaucon as Reader of the Bayeux Tapestry" in Janet T. Marquardt and Alyce A. Jordan (eds.) Medieval Art and Architecture after the Middle Ages (2009) p. 89
12. ^ Elizabeth Carson Pastan. "Montfaucon as Reader of the Bayeux Tapestry" in Janet T. Marquardt and Alyce A. Jordan (eds.) Medieval Art and Architecture after the Middle Ages (2009) pp. 102-103