[citation needed] He began a series of studies on the chroniclers of the Middle Ages for the Historiens des Gaules et de la France (edited by Martin Bouquet), Raoul Glaber, Helgaud, the Gesta of Louis VII, the chronicle of Morigny, Rigord and his continuator, William le Breton, the monk of St. Denis, Jean de Venette, Froissart and the Jouvencel.

In 1758 La Curne de Sainte-Palaye was elected a member of the Académie française (he was also in the academies in Dijon and Nancy and a corresponding member of the Accademia della Crusca) and in 1759 he published the first edition of his Mémoires sur l'ancienne chevalerie, considérée comme un établissement politique et militaire, for which unfortunately he only used works of fiction and ancient stories as sources, neglecting the heroic poems which would have shown him the nobler aspects of an institution so soon corrupted by "courteous" manners; a second edition appeared at the time of his death (3 vols.

[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.

[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.

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.

[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).