After completing the course of humanities and rhetoric, he entered, in 1705, the monastery of Moyenmoutier in the Vosges, belonging to the Benedictine congregation of St-Vannes and St-Hydulphe.

While a professor at Moyenmoutier, he wrote an "Apologie de la morale des Pères, contre les injustes accusations du sieur Jean Barbeyrac, professeur en droit et en histoire à Lausanne" (Paris, 1718).

[2] This was followed by the Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclésiastiques (23 vols., Paris, 1729–1763), a history and analysis of the writings of ecclesiastical writers of the first thirteen centuries.

The most valuable portion of Ceillier's Histoire généale des auteurs sacrés et ecclésiastiques is that dealing with the Church fathers of the first six centuries.

Here the author was able to draw upon the writings of Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont and use the scholarly Benedictine editions of the Church fathers.