Jean Mallon (20 June 1904, in
Le Havre
Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very ...
– 16 November 1982) was a French palaeographer, specialist of Latin
palaeography
Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...
.
Career
A student at the
École Nationale des Chartes
The École Nationale des Chartes (, literally National School of Charters) is a French ''grande école'' and a constituent college of Université PSL, specialising in the historical sciences. It was founded in 1821, and was located initially at ...
, he obtained his archivist-palaeographer degree in 1926. He then was a curator at the
Archives nationales.
John Mallon had a major influence on the French school of paleography, introducing and demonstrating the importance of the ''
ductus'' as dynamic element of the evolution of writings. In the early years of his work, from 1937 to 1939, he retained the traditional theory that wanted all Roman writings were from the capital calligraphy by a regularly continuous transformation processing thereof, but highlighted the problems that this theory raised. He innovated by creating the first palaeographic movie, ''La lettre'', which highlighted the role of successive actions of cursiveness and calligraphy on the morphological transformation of the alphabet. He published, with
Robert Marichal, ''L'écriture latine de la capitale romaine à la minuscule''.
After the war, Mallon was the project manager of the ''"nouvelle paléographie"'' (new paleography) and published in 1952 the work ''Paléographie romaine'', which organized new concepts of the evolution of writing in a consistent and flawless presentation: the inclination of the support moves the thick and thin strokes and generates a genealogy of various scriptures attested in Roman times that can no longer be seen as a continuous multiple affiliations, but in a pattern that, in outline, must be at least bifurcated.
The thirty years following the ''Paléographie romaine'' were those of "exploitation and activism." Because of his originality and his work covering
epigraphy,
diplomatics
Diplomatics (in American English, and in most anglophone countries), or diplomatic (in British English), is a scholarly discipline centred on the critical analysis of documents: especially, historical documents. It focuses on the conventions, p ...
,
papyrology
Papyrology is the study of manuscripts of ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., preserved on portable media from antiquity, the most common form of which is papyrus, the principal writing material in the ancient civilizations ...
and
codicology, he was considered "the pioneer of the French new school of palaeography".
Publications
Books
*1939: .
*1952: Jean Mallon. ''Paléographie romaine'', Madrid, Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, Instituto Antonio de Nebrija de filologia, 189 p. (''Scripturae, monumenta et studia'', 3).
*1951: Monsalud, Mariano Cárlos Solano Gálvez de San Pelayo y Villalpando, marquis de. ''Las Inscripciones publicadas por el marqués de Monsalud (1897-1908). Estudio crítico'', éd. Jean Mallon et Tomás Marín, Madrid, Consejo sup. de investig. cient., XXV-135 p. (''Scripturae monumenta et studia'', 2).
*1982:
*1986:
*1963: Archives nationales (France), ''Inventaire des archives de la marine. T. 8, Sous-série B3, 561-803'', réd. Henri Buche et Jean Mallon, Paris : Impr. nationale.
Articles
*1948: ''Pour une nouvelle critique des chiffres dans les inscriptions latines gravées sur pierre', "Emerita", t. 16, p. 14-45.
*1949: ''Quel est le plus ancien exemple connu d'un manuscrit latin en forme de codex ?'', "Emerita", t. 17, p. 1-8.
*1952: ''La Brique de Villaviciosa de Cordoba, Ps. XCV, 11'', in "Studi in onore di Cesare Manaresi", Milano, A. Giuffré, p. 209-216.
*1955: ''Une inscription latine incomplètement gravée'', "Libyca, Archéologie, Epigraphie", t. 3, p. 155-162
*1957: ''Scriptoria épigraphiques'', in "Scriptorium", t. 11/2, p. 177-194.
*1964–1965: Jean Mallon,
Charles Perrat, ''Liste de noms écrits sur marbre'', in "Mélanges de Carthage" offerts à Charles Saumagne, Louis Poinssot, Maurice Pinard, Paris : Librairie orientaliste P. Geuthner, p. 135-139.
*1970:
Gilbert Charles-Picard
Gilbert Picard, called Gilbert Charles-Picard, (15 October 1913 – 21 December 1998) was a 20th-century French historian and archaeologist, a specialist of North Africa during Antiquity.
The son of Hellenist Charles Picard (1883–1965), h ...
, Henri Le Bonniec, Jean Mallon, ''Le Cippe de Beccut'', in "Antiquités africaines", t. 4, p. 125-164.
* ''L'Écriture de la chancellerie impériale romaine'', "Acta Salmanticensia. Filosofía y letras", t. 4/2
*1976: ''Schéma à propos d'une inscription latine publiée dans un recueil récent'', "Scriptorium", t. 30, .
*1977: ''Panorama actual de la investigacion sobre escrituras latinas : perspectivas para el futuro'', in "Actas de las I jornadas de metodologia aplicada de las ciencias historicas, V paleografia y archivistica", Santiago de Compostela : Universidad, .
*1981: ''Qu'est-ce que la paléographie ?'', communication dactylographiée au "Colloque du Comité international de paléographie", Munich, 15 September.
Film
Jean Mallon, 'Ductus', director Jean Venard, animation Equipe Arcady, music by Jean Cohen-Solal, conseiller artistique Georges Richar, prod. Les films verts
[See catalog of the "Cinémathèque verte]
online
p. 120-121 n° 138
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mallon, Jean
French palaeographers
École Nationale des Chartes alumni
Writers from Le Havre
1904 births
1982 deaths