h were shut
together (Gr. [Greek: diploun], to double) like the leaves of a book,
was the passport or licence to travel by the public post; also, the
certificate of discharge, conferring privileges of citizenship and
marriage on soldiers who had served their time; and, later, any imperial
grant of privileges. The word was adopted, rather pedantically, by the
humanists of the Renaissance and applied by them to important deeds and
to acts of sovereign authority, to privileges granted by kings and by
great personages; and by degrees the term became extended and embraced
generally the documents of the middle ages.

_History of the Study._--The term "diplomatic," the French
_diplomatique_, is a modern adaptation of the Latin phrase _res
diplomatica_ employed in early works upon the subject, and more
especially in the first great text-book, the _De re diplomatica_, issued
in 1681 by the learned Benedictine, Dom Jean Mabillon, of the abbey of
St Germain-des-Pres. Mabillon's treatise was called forth by an earlier
work of Daniel van Papenbroeck, the editor of the _Acta Sanctorum_ of
the Bollandists, who, with no great knowledge or experience of archives,
undertook to criticize the historical value of ancient records and
monastic documents, and raised wholesale suspicions as to their
authenticity in his _Propylaeum antiquarium circa veri ac falsi
discrimen in vetustis membranis_, which he printed in 1675. This was a
rash challenge to the Benedictines, and especially to the congregation
of St Maur, or confraternity of the Benedictine abbeys of France, whose
combined efforts produced great literary works which still remain as
monuments of profound learning. Mabillon was at that time engaged in
collecting material for a great history of his order. He worked silently
for six years before producing the work above referred to. His
refutation of Papenbroeck's criticisms was complete, and his rival
himself accepted Mabillon's system of the study of diplomatic as the
true one. The _De re diplomatica_ established the science on a secure
basis; and it has been the foundation of all subsequent works on the
subject, although the immediate result of its publication was a flood of
controversial writings between the Jesuits and the Benedictines, which,
however, did not affect its stability.

In Spain, the Benedictine Perez published, in 1688, a series of
dissertations following the line of Mabillon's work. In England, Madox's
_Formulare Angli