Ruinart, Thierry

, a French theologian, was born at Rheims, June 10, 1657, and became a Benedictine monk in 1674. He studied the scriptures, the fathers, and ecclesiastical writers, in so masterly a way, that Mabillon chose him for a companion in his literary labours. He shewed himself not unworthy of the good opinion Mabillon had conceived of him, when he published, in 1689, “Acta Primorurn Martyrum,” &c. 4to, meaning the martyrs of the first four centuries. In a preface to this work, he endeavours to refute a notion, which our Dodwell had advanced in a piece “De paucitate Martyrum,” inserted among his | “Dissertationes Cyprianicae.” A new edition of this work, with alterations and additions, was printed ie 1713, folio. Ruinart publisnec other learned works, as *' Hist, persecutionis Vandalicae,“”Jtor Literariinn in Alsatiam et Lotharingiain,“&c.; and assisted Mabillon, whom he survived, and whose life he wrote, in the publication of the acts of the saints, and annals of their order. He gave alsc -in excellent edition of the works of” Gregory of Tours, it Paris, 1699, in folio. When Mabillon died, in 1707, he was appointed to continue the work in which he had jointly laboured with him; upon which he travelled to Champagne, in quest of new memoirs, but on his return to Pads died Sept. 24, 1707. ¹