Books and Manuscripts

Mabillon, Johannis
De Re Diplomatica Libri VI...
Paris: Ludovici Billaine, 1681. First edition. Folio. (xvi), 460, 457-634, (30) pp.. Illustrated with an engraved allegorical title-page, engraved vignette title-page, 58 engraved plates, and engraved initials and head- and tail-pieces. Contemporary full pigskin over wooden beveled boards, elaborately tooled in blind, remnants of clasps, later paper spine label, upper spine worn with loss, boards and extremities soiled and slightly worn; edges stained red; remnants from removed label on front paste-down; ownership signature, dated 1844, on title-page, (library) ink number at head of same; ink stamp on verso of title-page; prelims toned with scattered soiling; scattered spotting to text; gutter of several plates repaired; scattered contemporary marginalia and underlining. Printing and the Mind of Man 158

Scarce first edition in a contemporary binding of Jean Mabillon's groundbreaking work that established the field of diplomatics and paleography. “The stately folio volume which contains Mabillon's ‘Six Books on the Scientific Study of Mediaeval Charters’ created at one stroke the historical disciplines now called by the somewhat misleading term of ‘auxillary sciences’, and procured for its author a European reputation which the passage of three centuries has not dimmed." (PMM) 

A member of the Benedictine Congregation of St. Maur in St. Germain-des-Pres near Paris, Mabillon was prompted to publish this work when doubts were raised over the authenticity of Merovingian charters held in the Abbey of St. Denis. De Re Diplomatica served as a critical rebuttal to the work of Jesuit Daniel van Papenbroek, who first cast doubts on the documents, and Mabillon investigates different types of Mediaeval documents, scrutinizing their scripts, seals, style, and other factors. As a result, Mabillon “not only only proved the authenticity of the charters but expounded the regular and logical development of the Latin script from the capital letters of imperial Rome down to the handwriting of his time and incidentally taught his readers to decipher the various hands,” and also, “dealt with other fact determining the outward appearance of medieval documents, and thus put on a secure basis the ‘formal’ auxillary sciences of the study of charters (diplomatic), handwriting (paleography), seals (sphragistics), dates (chronology) and so forth.” (PMM)