Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye
Encyclopedia
Auxerre
Auxerre is a commune in the Bourgogne region in north-central France, between Paris and Dijon. It is the capital of the Yonne department.Auxerre's population today is about 45,000...
- 1 March 1781, Paris) was a French historian, classicist, philologist and lexicographer.
Life
From an ancient family, his father Edme had been gentleman of the bed-chamber to the Duke of Orléans, brother of Louis XIVLouis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
(a position Jean-Baptiste held for a time under the regent Orléans
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
Philippe d'Orléans was a member of the royal family of France and served as Regent of the Kingdom from 1715 to 1723. Born at his father's palace at Saint-Cloud, he was known from birth under the title of Duke of Chartres...
) and then receiver of the salt grenier
Grenier
Grenier is a surname and may refer to:* Adrian Grenier* Eustace Grenier* Henri-Georges Grenier* John Grenier* Louis Grenier, fictional character* Martin Grenier* Philippe Grenier* Richard Grenier* Robert Grenier, a former CIA officer...
in Auxerre. La Curne de Sainte-Palaye's health was delicate and so he only began his classical studies aged 15, but he read with such enthusiasm and studied so successfully that his reputation alone (he had not yet published anything) got him elected to as a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...
in 1724, aged only 27. That same year he took on a study of the medieval chroniclers, which led him into research on the origins of chivalry
Chivalry
Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...
. He then spent one year (1725) spent at the court of king Stanislas, as charged by the correspondence between this prince and the French court.
After his Polish stay wrote a mémoire
Mémoire
In French culture, the word mémoire, as in un mémoire is used for a piece of writing allowing the author to show his or her opinion on a given subject, logically approaching a series of facts in order to arrive at a recommendation or conclusion...
on two passages from Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
and Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
(1727) and numerous other memoirs on Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
history, before moving to work on French history. From then on he almost exclusively devoted himself to the study and recovery of manuscripts relating to the history of France's language and institutions. He began a series of studies on the chroniclers of the Middle Ages for the Historiens des Gaules et de la France (edited by Martin Bouquet
Martin Bouquet
Martin Bouquet was a French Benedictine and historian, of the Congregation of St.-Maur. His major work was Rerum Gallicarum et Francicarum Scriptores, a collection of the historians of Gaul and France, which covers the time from France's earliest history until the year 987.-Biography:Bouquet was...
), Raoul Glaber, Helgaud
Helgaud
Helgaud or Helgaldus , French chronicler, was a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Fleury.Little else is known about him save that he was chaplain to the French king, Robert II the Pious, whose life he wrote...
, the Gesta of Louis VII
Louis VII of France
Louis VII was King of France, the son and successor of Louis VI . He ruled from 1137 until his death. He was a member of the House of Capet. His reign was dominated by feudal struggles , and saw the beginning of the long rivalry between France and England...
, the chronicle of Morigny, Rigord and his continuator
Continuator
A continuator, in literature, is a writer who creates a new work based on someone else's prior text, such as a novel or novel fragment. The new work may complete the older work , or may try to serve as a sequel or prequel to the older work A continuator, in literature, is a writer who creates a new...
, William le Breton, the monk of St. Denis, Jean de Venette
Jean de Venette
Jean de Venette was a French chronicler and a Carmelite friar born at Venette, near Compiègne. He was referred to as a "Fillions", author or translator of a long poem circa 1357. In 1339, he became prior of the Carmelite convent in the Place Maubert, Paris, and was provincial of France from 1341...
, Froissart and the Jouvencel.
He made two journeys into Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
with his brother, the first in 1739-1740, accompanied by his compatriot, the president Charles de Brosses
Charles de Brosses
Charles de Brosses, comte de Tournay, baron de Montfalcon, seigneur de Vezins et de Prevessin was a French writer of the 18th century.-Life:...
, who related many humorous anecdotes about the two brothers, particularly about Jean-Baptiste, whom he called "the bilious Sainte-Palaye!" On returning from this tour he saw one of Jean de Joinville
Jean de Joinville
Jean de Joinville was one of the great chroniclers of medieval France.Son of Simon de Joinville and Beatrice d'Auxonne, he belonged to a noble family from Champagne. He received an education befitting a young noble at the court of Theobald IV, count of Champagne: reading, writing, and the...
's manuscripts at the house of the senator Fiorentini
Fiorentini
The Fiorentini are a noble Italian family from the Valsugana.Engineer Filippo Fiorentini founded the Fiorentini & C. S.p.A. factory of excavators in 1919 in Rome, Italy. He imported and distributed construction equipment. During the time of Fascism, restrictions banned import and Ing...
, well known in the history of the text of this pleasing memorialist. The manuscript was bought for the king in 1741 and is still at the Bibliothèque nationale
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
. After the second journey (1749) Lacurne published a letter to de Brosses, on Le goût dans les arts (1751). In this he showed that he was not only attracted by manuscripts, but that he could see and admire works of art. Whilst there he also reported on 4,000 unpublished or little known sources, taught himself Provençal
Franco-Provençal language
Franco-Provençal , Arpitan, or Romand is a Romance language with several distinct dialects that form a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue d'Oïl and Langue d'Oc. The name Franco-Provençal was given to the language by G.I...
and formed his vast number of manuscripts into a collection of 23 folio volumes. He was interested in several literary deposits in France. Finally he gathered more than 4,000 summaries of manuscripts and copies of the most precious documents together.
His research on the chroniclers and romanciers
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
led him to form a three-pronged and vast endeavour - to explain chivalry (adding a history of the troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
s to this as he went), to compose a dictionary of French antiquities, and to write a full glossary of variations of the French language. In 1758 La Curne de Sainte-Palaye was elected a member of the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
in 1758 (he was also part of the academies in Dijon
Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres de Dijon
The Académie de Dijon was founded by Hector-Bernard Pouffier, the most senior member of the Parlement de Bourgogne, in 1725. It received royal lettres patentes in 1740...
and Nancy and a corresponding member of the Accademia della Crusca
Accademia della Crusca
The Accademia della Crusca is an Italian society for scholars and Italian linguists and philologists established in Florence. After the Accademia Cosentina, it is the oldest Italian academy still in existence...
) and in 1759 he published the first edition of his Mémoires sur l'ancienne chevalerie, considérée comme un établissement politique et militaire, for which unfortunately he only used works of fiction and ancient stories as sources, neglecting the heroic poems which would have shown him the nobler aspects of this institution so soon corrupted by "courteous" manners; a second edition appeared at the time of his death (3 vols. 1781, 3rd ed. 1826). He prepared an edition of the works of Eustache Deschamps
Eustache Deschamps
Eustache Deschamps was a medieval French poet, also known as Eustache Morel . Born at Vertus, in Champagne, he received lessons in versification from Guillaume de Machaut and later studied law at Orleans University. He then traveled through Europe as a diplomatic messenger for Charles V...
, which was never published, and also made a collection of more than a hundred volumes of extracts from ancient authors relating to French antiquities and the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
of the Middle Ages. His Glossaire de la langue française was ready in 1756, and a prospectus had been published, but the great length of the work prevented him finding a publisher. It remained in manuscript for more than a century.
In 1764 a collection of his manuscripts was bought by the government and after his death were placed in the king's library; they are still there (in the fonds Moreau), with the exception of some which were given to the marquess of Paulmy
Paulmy
Paulmy is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France....
in exchange, and were later placed in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal
Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal
The Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris is one of the branches of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.-History:...
. Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye ceased work about 1771; the death of his brother was greatly felt by him, he became childish, and died on the 1st of March 1781.
Critical reception
His life was written for this Académie by ChamfortNicolas Chamfort
Nicolas Chamfort was a French writer, best known for his witty epigrams and aphorisms. He was secretary of Louis XVI's sister, and of the Jacobin club.-Life:...
and for the Académie des Inscriptions by Dupuy; both works have no value. See, however, the biography of Lacurne, with a list of his published works and those in manuscript, at the beginning of the tenth and last volume of the Dictionnaire historique de l'ancien langage françoise, ou glossaire de la langue françoise depuis son origine jusqu'au sieclé de Louis XIV, published by Louis Favre (1875-1882). See also Lionel Gossman
Lionel Gossman
Lionel Gossman is a Scottish-American scholar of French literature. He taught Romance Languages at Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University, and has written extensively on the history, theory and practice of historiography, and more recently, on aspects of German cultural...
's book, Medievalism and the ideologies of the Enlightenment: the world and work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1968).
Works and collections
His most notable work is the Dictionnaire des antiquités françaises, no less than 40 folio volumes. This work, acquired by M. Moreau, is now in the Bibliothèque nationale, and its dimensions preclude its being published. Some of his other publications include :- Letter to M. de Bachaumont on good taste in the arts and letters (1751), in-12 ;
- an edition of a fableFableA fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
, les Amours du bon vieux temps, Aucassin et Nicolette (Vaucluse [Paris], 1756, in-12); - Mémoires sur l'ancienne chevalerie, chevalerie considérée comme un établissement politique et militaire.
- a series of Mémoires, inserted into the publication of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettresAcadémie des Inscriptions et Belles-LettresThe Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...
(t. VII, X, XIII, XIV, XV, XVII, XX, XXIV).
He also left about a hundred folio volumes of manuscripts, now split between the Bibliothèque nationale
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
and the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal
Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal
The Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris is one of the branches of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.-History:...
, with the latter containing the materials for a Glossaire français, including the self-published Projet (1756, in-4°) and a description of the execution of Georges-Jean Mouchet : only the first volume of this important 10-12 volume work was printed during his lifetime, with the final one published in 1875.
- Letter to M. de Bachaumont on good taste in arts and letters (1751), in-12
Sources
- Gustave Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des littératures, Paris, Hachette, 1876, p. 1809