Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tillemont, Sébastien le Nain de

TILLEMONT, Sébastien le Nain de (1637-1698), ecclesiastical historian, was born at Paris on 30th November 1637, and received his education in the "petites 6coles" of the Port Royalists, Nicole being his principal master. At an early age he became an admiring student of Livy and Baronius and began to accumulate those vast collections which form the basis of his monumental works. He continued to carry on his studies in the seminary at Beauvais, where the bishop was a warm patron; but it was not until 1676, two or three years after his return to Paris, that, under the influence of Isaac de Sacy, he entered the priesthood. He took up his abode in a humble dwelling at Port Royal des Champs, where he remained till the dispersion of the "solitaires" in 1679, after which event he spent the remainder of his life (with the exception of a visit to Arnauld in Holland in 1685) at Tillemont, between Montreuil and Vincennes. He died on 28th January 1698 and was buried at Port Royal; in 1711 his remains were removed to the church of St Andre des Arcs, Paris.

His great work, Mémoires pour servir à I'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles to 513 A.D. (1693-1712, 16 vols., 4to), is a model of patient, exhaustive, and what Gibbon has called "sure-footed" erudition (see vol. v. p. 765). Of his equally learned Histoire des empereurs et des autres princes qui ont régné durant les six premiers siècles de I'église (1690-1738, 4to) no more than four volumes were published. Tillemont also gave valuable assistance to Hermant, Du Fossé, and other Port Royalists in their historical work.