LE QUIEN, MICHEL

Dominican theologian and historian of the Eastern Church; b. Boulogne-sur-Mer, Oct. 8, 1661; d. Paris, March 12, 1733. After studying at Plessis College, Paris, Le Quien entered the Dominican Order, in which he served as librarian of the convent of Saint-Honoré in Paris and devoted his career to scholarly pursuits. He mastered Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic; assisted scholars; and was a friend of Bernard de montfaucon and the maurists. He published Défense du texte hébreu et de la version Vulgate (Paris 1690), in which he attempted to establish the integrity of the text. In his Panoplia contra schisma Graecorum (Paris 1718), published under the pseudonym Stephanus de Altamura Ponticensis, he took issue with the historical arguments advanced by Patriarch Nectarius of Jerusalem against the papal primacy and opposed the validity of Anglican Orders in a bitter controversy (91725–31) with P. Le Courayer. He produced the still standard though incomplete edition of St. john damascene's Opera omnia (2 v. Paris 1712; Patrologia Graeca v.94–96) and Oriens Christianus (3 v., posthumous, Paris 1740). The latter work is a synthesis of the history of the Oriental patriarchates and bishoprics with an account of the Latin bishops who occupied those sees after the Crusades. His ambitious plan to include in this work the Notitiae episcopatuum and catalogues of the Eastern and African monasteries and of the African hierarchy had to be abandoned. Le Quien also wrote a monograph on Boulogne-sur-Mer and left unfinished an edition of the Opera omnia Leontii Byzantini.

Bibliography: h. leclercq, Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne, 15 v. (Paris 1907–53) 8.2:2592–96. j. carreyre, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 v. (Paris 1903–50) 9.1:441–443. h. engberding, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (Freiburg 1957–65) 6:974. s. vailhÉ, The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. c. g. herbermann et al., 16 v. (New York 1907–14; suppl. 1922) 9:187–188.

[j. beaudry]