Claude Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History , A Newly Identified Source for Melville’s Reading

Abstract: In preparing Melville’s copy of William Rounseville Alger’s The Solitudes of Nature and of Man (Boston: Roberts, 1867) for mounting at Melville’s Marginalia Online , the transcription of one of Melville’s annotations was corrected to reveal a direct reference to Claude Fleury’s The Ecclesiastical History of M. L’ Abbé Fleury (Oxford: Rivingston, London, 1842). Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History adds to the evidence of Melville’s comprehensive study of religious history in the Near East while composing Clarel , a course of study comparable to that which his eponymous protagonist would have received in divinity school. Melville’s annotation identifies Fleury’s history as the source for Alger’s reference to Arsenius the Great, an ascetic monk who fled the court of the Emperor Arcadius, joined a desert monastery and “for fifty years made his life one long solitary prayer” ( MMO Alger 180). Melville’s familiarity with Fleury’s history adds to the evidence of his interest in hagiography and the relationship between ascetic practices and aesthetic theory. As he continued to study poetry and aesthetics in the latter stages of his career, ascetic practices and aesthetic contemplation were increasingly interrelated in Melville’s conception of the creation and experience of art.