Jean Garet

Benedictine of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, born at Havre about 1627; died at Jumièges, 24 September, 1694. He was professed in 1647 when he was twenty years old, and lived in the Abbey of Saint-Ouen at Rouen. While there he prepared an edition of Cassiodorus which was published at Rouen in 1679. Mommsen’s criticism on his edition of the “Variae”, which was included in the above work, is very severe: “A work without either skill or learning Garet took Fournier’s text (Paris, 1579) as a basis, and inserted alterations of his own rather than corrections.” (Mon. Germ. Hist.: Auct. antiq., XII, cxv). As a preface to his edition Garet wrote a dissertation in which he tried to prove that Cassiodorus was a Benedictine. Migne followed the Garet edition in P.L., LXIX-LXX, and it remains the most complete modern edition. Needless to say it does not contain the “Complexiones” discovered later by Maffei.