Martin Bouquet

Martin Bouquet (6 August 1685 – 6 April 1754) was a French Benedictine monk and historian, of the Catholic 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.

Bouquet was born at Amiens, France. As a boy he wanted to become a priest, but later decided to become a Benedictine monk. He joined the Congregation of St Maur and took vows at the monastery of St Faron, at Meaux on 16 August 1706.

Shortly after he became a priest his superiors appointed him librarian at the monastery of St.-Germain-des-Prés, which at that time possessed a library of 60,000 books and 8,000 manuscripts. Being well versed in ancient Greek, Bouquet assisted his confrère Bernard de Montfaucon in his edition of the works of John Chrysostom. He himself was preparing a new edition of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, and had already progressed far in his work when he heard that the Dutch writer Sigebert Haverkamp was engaged on a new edition of the same author. He sent all the material he had collected to Haverkamp, who embodied it in his edition.

Bouquet's greatest work is his collection of the historians of Gaul and France, entitled: Rerum Gallicarum et Francicarum Scriptores.

Attempts to collect the sources of French history had been made at various times. Thus Pierre Pithou (died 1596) had collected some material, and André Duchesne (died 1640) had begun a work entitled "Historiæ Francorum Scriptores", to be published in twenty-four volumes, but died before finishing the fifth volume. Colbert, the great French minister of finance, desired to have Duchesne's work continued at the expense of the State, but he died in 1683 without finding a suitable historian to complete what Duchesne had begun.

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