Monasticon Gallicanum

The Monasticon Gallicanum is a collection of 168 engravings of topographical views, with two maps, representing 147 French monasteries belonging to the reformist Benedictine Congregation of St. Maur.

[2] Dom Michel Germain, a monk at the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and a friend of Jean Mabillon, undertook the task.

Over time they became disordered and some were lost; those surviving eventually found their way to the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

[2] Achille Peigné-Delacourt, an antiquary and collector of mediaeval documents, realised the importance of Germain's illustrations, since so many of the original buildings had been lost in the interval.

The task of verifying which engravings were genuinely among those commissioned by Germain was undertaken by Louis Courajod, archivist and palaeographer attached to the Department of Prints and Photographs of the Bibliothèque Nationale (then the Bibliothèque Impériale) for the complete edition of the illustrations of the Monasticon Gallicanum published in 1870–71, which successfully reproduced the prints at half-size without losing sharpness of detail.