Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye

Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (June 1697 – 1 March 1781) was a French historian, classicist, philologist and lexicographer.

Biography

From an ancient family, his father Edme had been gentleman of the bedchamber to the

After his Polish stay he wrote a

In 1756, Sainte-Palaye published his Projet d’un glossaire françois, a plan for constructing an historical glossary of Old French from the materials he had been so diligently collecting.[3] Despite the assistance of Antoine Guiroy, Louis-Georges-Oudard Feudrix de Bréquigny, and Georges-Jean Mouchet over many years, his Glossaire françois remained unfinished at his death in 1781. A few years later, Mouchet finally began to publish the Glossaire françois, but the French Revolution interrupted before the 1st volume was completely printed.^[4] Further decades passed before Léopold Favre at last assembled the manuscripts prepared by Saint-Palaye, Guiroy, Bréquigny, and Mouchet for publication as the Dictionnaire historique de l’ancien langage françois in 1875.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]} No further editions have appeared.

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 in exchange, and were later placed in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye ceased work about 1771; the death of his twin brother was greatly felt by him, he suffered dementia, and died on 1 March 1781.^[1]

Critical reception

His life was written for this Académie by Chamfort 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).^[1] See also Lionel Gossman'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

• Letter to M. de Bachaumont on good taste in the arts and letters (1751), in-12 ;
• an edition of a fable, 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-lettres
  (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 and the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, 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 ten to twelve 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

References

Sources

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sainte-Palaye, Jean Baptiste la Curne de". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 2.
• Gustave Vapereau
  , Dictionnaire universel des littératures, Paris, Hachette, 1876, p. 1809

External links

• Biography on the Académie française site