Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (June 1697 – 1 March 1781) was a French historian, classicist, philologist and lexicographer. Biography From an ancient family, his father Edme had been gentleman of the bedchamber to the Duke of Orléans, brother of Louis XIV (a position Jean-Baptiste held for a time under the regent Orléans) and then receiver of the greniers à sel (salt granary tax, or gabelle) in Auxerre. La Curne de Sainte-Palaye's health was delicate and so he only began his classical studies aged 15, but he read with such enthusiasm and studied so successfully that his reputation alone (he had not yet published anything) got him elected as a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1724, aged only 27. That same year he took on a study of the medieval chroniclers, which led him to research into the origins of chivalry. He then spent one year (1725) at the court of king Stanislas, in charge of the correspondence between this prince and the French court. After his Polish stay he wrote a mémoire on two passages from Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1727) and numerous other memoirs on Roman history, before moving to work on French history. From then on he almost exclusively devoted himself to the study and recovery of manuscripts relating to the history of France's language and institutions. He began a series of studies on the chroniclers of the Middle Ages for the Historiens des Gaules et de la France (edited by Martin Bouquet), Raoul Glaber, Helgaud, the Gesta of Louis VII, the chronicle of Morigny, Rigord and his continuator, William le Breton, the monk of St. Denis, Jean de Venette, Froissart and the Jouvencel. He made two journeys into Italy with his brother, the first in 1739–40, accompanied by their compatriot Charles de Brosses, who related many humorous anecdotes about the two brothers, particularly about Jean-Baptiste, whom he called "the bilious Sainte-Palaye!" On returning from this tour he saw one of Jean de Joinville's manuscripts at the house of the senator Fiorentini, well known in the history of the text of this pleasing memorialist. The manuscript was bought for the king in 1741 and is still at the Bibliothèque nationale. After the second journey (1749) Lacurne published a letter to de Brosses, on Le Goût dans les arts (1751). In this he showed that he was not only attracted by manuscripts,