8 - On the Abbots of Le Mont Saint-Michel. An Edition and Translation

Summary

Introduction

The Latin text labeled in its lone extant (medieval) source De abbatibus [Montis Sancti Michaelis] rubrica, although at first called cathalogus abbatum, is well known to historians. A capsule history of the abbots from the reform of 966 to 1445, it commemorated their challenges and achievements, notably in building and rebuilding, in successive anonymous entries. Yet the source of this useful record long ago fell into oblivion, as if lost. The text is known and invariably cited from a seventeenth-century printing. And when this version is compared with its apparent source, the need of a new edition becomes clear. That is what is offered here. And in the circumstances of this case, it seems advisable to reverse the normal order in textual editing by starting with the story of prior publication. For without that story, the state of this text and its transmission (and its title) cannot easily be explained.

The Text

Preserved by the monks of Mont Saint-Michel together with their oldest memorials in what is presently Avranches, Bibliothèque municipale, Manuscrit 213, De abbatibus was exploited by the Maurist monk-scholar Jean Huynes, whose Traictés de l'histoire du Mont St-Michel date from 1638–40, and by others soon after. It was printed by Philippe Labbé SJ in 1657. And it is on Labbé's authority that the text has been cited ever since. The compilers of the Gallia Christiana saw no need to reprint it, nor did the early editors of the Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France.