posed to dissolve the congregation. The preface was less successful than the biography implies. F£nelon declared it equally offensive to Catholics and to Jansenists ; and one of the Benedictines accuses the writer of trimming, and says, "Cette préface donne quelque atteinte à la reputation de Dom Mabillon."
Though slow to admit the justice of attacks, the biographer does not care to refute them. When Mabillon, whose function it was to write correct and copious Latin, became revealed, under stress of controversy, as a master of unsuspected French, it was believed that his friend Nicole stood at his elbow and revised his style. This, we are told, is untrue. Nevertheless, the authority for it is Rancé, an adversary, no doubt, not to be trusted in speaking of character, but so richly furnished with sources of information, that his word, on matters of fact, deserves the compliment of refutation. Richard Simon, being, like Fenelon, a Molinist, disliked and disparaged Mabillon. According to Simon, there was so much opposition in the abbey to his special studies that he wished to escape from it ; several of the monks became Protestants ; and one, after scoffing at the new criticism, fled to Berlin. The superior himself was not at ease with such a fish in his net : "Il a toujours été dans cette pensée, que les lettrez de sa maison n'apportoient que du désordre ; et s'il en avoit été crù, on les auroit obligez aux exercices de la communauté comme tous les autres Religieux." Threatened with an action for libel — "de injuriis lege postulatus" — Simon withdrew certain of his statements, which are furthermore contested in the posthumous volume of the Annales ordinis S. Benedicti. The report of internal dissension at St. Germain does not appear to have been either confuted or withdrawn, and, coming from one who, in the view of posterity, was the most important divine then living, who did more for the advancement of religious knowledge than either Bossuet or Mabillon himself, calls for verification. All this we are not suffered to know or to perpend. Neither attack nor defence is set forth.
Perhaps the most curious document in these volumes
