JEAN, a learned writer of France, was born at Perremonte, on the frontiers of Champagne, in the year 1632. He was educated in the university of Rheims, and afterwards entered into the abbey of the Benedictines of St Rémy. In the year 1668 he was appointed keeper of the treasures and monuments of France at St Denis. Next year he went to Paris, and proved serviceable to Father d'Achéri, in compiling his Speculumum. Soon afterwards the congregation of Saint-Maur charged him with the edition of St Bernard, which he prepared with extraordinary diligence. In the year 1685 Louis XIV sent him into Germany, to search the archives and libraries of the ancient abbeys for all that seemed calculated to illustrate the history of the church in general, and that of France in particular. Mabillon published an account of this journey in his Iter Germanicum. In the year 1685 he undertook a similar journey into Italy, and returned the year following with a very noble collection, of which he gave an account in his Museum Italicum. He also wrote an Iter Burgundicum, a work similar to those just mentioned. Next to Mabillon's Correspondence, one of his most interesting works is his Reflexions sur les Prisons des Ordres Religieux, in which he censures the cruelties of the monastic houses, and discloses the horrors of the famous subterranean dungeons, known as Vade in Pace, in which some were confined till they died. Another event in Mabillon's life worthy of being recorded, was the bold stand he made, in his Traité des Études Monastiques, in 1691, against the narrow bigotry of the Abbé de Rancé, who had forbidden the monks all scientific studies, and all reading, except the Breviary. Mabillon died at Paris in 1707. He was one of the most learned, liberal, and candid men of his age. His various works were collected and published after his death, under the title of Ouvrages Posthumes de D. Jean Mabillon et D. Thierri Ruinart, Bénédictins de la Congregation de St Maur, 3 vols. 4to, Paris, 1724.