Bernard de Montfaucon

Bernard de Montfaucon was a French Benedictine monk of the Congregation of Saint Maur. He was an astute scholar who founded the discipline of palaeography, as well as being an editor of works of the Fathers of the Church. He is regarded as one of the founders of the modern discipline of archaeology. He joined the monastery of Bream in Toulouse in 1676 and in 1687 was sent to Paris to edit the works of the Church Fathers. His major publications in this field were editions of Athanasius, 3 vol. (1698) and John Chrysostom, 13 vol. (1718–38). As a student of manuscripts in Paris and Italy, he carried the Maurist preoccupation with original sources into a new field. His Palæographia græca, sive de ortu et progressu litterarum græcarum (“Greek palaeography, or the origin and progress of Greek literature”) was published in 1708. As a student of antiquities he based his conclusions on the evidence of monuments; he might be said to be one of the founders of modern archaeology. He wrote the 15-volume L’Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures (1719; Antiquity Explained and Represented in Diagrams, 1721–25). He also collected and published various ancient Greek and Latin texts, such as the Chronicon Paschale and the works of Cassiodorus. He died in Paris on 21 December 1741 at the age of 86.