L’importance des sources de la période révolutionnaire pour la reconstitution des bibliothèques médiévales

Résumé En

The nationalization of ecclesiastical property in France, ordered in a series of decrees from 1789-1791, gave rise to the procedure of inventorying the libraries of ecclesias¬ tical establishments. This included both French and “foreign” establishments (located on territories recently occupied by Revolutionary France), thus producing a very rich documentary history which can “fix” the final state of collections of manuscripts and old printed books before they were dispersed. For collections that were formed in the medieval period and for which no catalogs were preserved, the revolutionary inventory becomes a unique tool which allows the study of the medieval library and its eventual reconstitution. This article focuses on the inventory of manuscripts (89 items) from the library of the Benedictine abbey of Gembloux (Belgium), recently discovered by us in the National Archives of France and identified as a copy of an revolutionary inventory established in 1795 (until now was considered lost). The richness and very rigorous methodology of the inventory allowed us to suggest identification for 84 items from the surviving manuscripts, all preserved today at the Royal Library of Belgium.