Hilaire Puibusque OSB (1737-89) as archivist and correspondent of the Cabinet des Chartes

In the second half of the 1780s, more than thirty members of the Benedictine Congregation of Saint-Vanne and Saint-Hydulphe contributed to the project of the Cabinet des Chartes (led by Jacob-Nicolas Moreau) to assemble a massive collection of copied charters pertaining to the medieval history of France. Their preserved letters in the Collection Moreau of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris sheds light on the obstacles faced by Moreau and his staff in working with inexperienced correspondents, several of whom soon lost interest in the project due to a lack of financial compensation or other return favours. While previous scholarship has studied these obstacles strictly from a top-down perspective, this paper studies sets out to consider the Cabinet’s letter collection and other relevant documentation from a bottom-up or biographical one. Looking at the the case of Nicolas-Hilaire (de) Puibusque (1737-89), it argues that such a perspective helps us to situate the monk’s work for the Cabinet in a broader discussion of his activities at the time, including those that we might consider had historiographical merit. In addition to giving more depth to our understanding of the scope and nature of his efforts for the Cabinet, a new look at his letters to Moreau and a comparison of their contents with his copied charters from the abbey of Bouxières in Lorraine and his work on an inventory at that institution reveals that Puibusque had a great deal more to gain, financially but arguably also intellectually, from his archival work for local patrons than from his distant and increasingly fraught relationship with the Cabinet staff.In the second half of the 1780s, more than thirty members of the Benedictine Congregation of Saint-Vanne and Saint-Hydulphe contributed to the project of the Cabinet des Chartes (led by Jacob-Nicolas Moreau) to assemble a massive collection of copied charters pertaining to the medieval history of France. Their preserved letters in the Collection Moreau of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris sheds light on the obstacles faced by Moreau and his staff in working with inexperienced correspondents, several of whom soon lost interest in the project due to a lack of financial compensation or other return favours. While previous scholarship has studied these obstacles strictly from a top-down perspective, this paper studies sets out to consider the Cabinet’s letter collection and other relevant documentation from a bottom-up or biographical one. Looking at the the case of Nicolas-Hilaire (de) Puibusque (1737-89), it argues that such a perspective helps us to situate the monk’s work for the Cabinet in a broader discussion of his activities at the time, including those that we might consider had historiographical merit. In addition to giving more depth to our understanding of the scope and nature of his efforts for the Cabinet, a new look at his letters to Moreau and a comparison of their contents with his copied charters from the abbey of Bouxières in Lorraine and his work on an inventory at that institution reveals that Puibusque had a great deal more to gain, financially but arguably also intellectually, from his archival work for local patrons than from his distant and increasingly fraught relationship with the Cabinet staff.A