Jean Saas was an 18th-century French historian and bibliographer.
Biography
At college of Rouen where he studied, Saas distinguished himself by his talent for Latin poetry. Having embraced the ecclesiastical state, he became one of the secretaries of the archbishop of Rouen and took advantage of the leisure left to him by this modest employment to become familiar with reading charts and study in depth the History of Normandy. Provided the cure of Saint-Jacques-sur-Darnétal, he soon resigned this benefit and accepted instead a position of librarian of the metropolitan chapter, which would facilitate the means to indulge his taste for historical and literary research. In the trial the chapter had to support against the Benedictines of the abbaye de Saint-Ouen, father Saas showed great zeal for the maintenance of the privileges of his church, and he was rewarded in 1751 by a canonry. Saas was known for a long time in an advantageous manner as a bibliographer. The assiduous reading of historical dictionaries proved him that those who were most esteemed were not error-free, and he was quick to point out, in small scholarly writings, those he had noticed. He was going topress a volume of notes forming a useful supplement to the latest edition of the Dictionaire of Moréri, when the sudden weakening of his forces forced him to give up all kind of work. He died suddenly after lingering a few years. Abbot Saas was a member of the Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Rouen since its founding, and he had shared the work with zeal, but the fate of the memoirs he had shared with this company is unknown. Haillet de Couronne read his Éloge of which an extract can be found in the Recueil de l’académie by M. Gosseaume, vol.4,. Another praise of abbot Saas, by Cotton Deshoussayes, was printed in Paris, Berton, 1776, in-8°.
Publications
Fables choisies by la Fontaine, translated into Latin verse bys PP. Vinot and Tissard, Anvers, 1738, in-12 de 288 p.
Nouveau Dictionnaire historique portatif, corrected and augmented with several articles, Avignon, 1769, 4 vol. in-8°.
Nouveau pouillé des bénéfices du diocèse de Rouen, ibid., 1738, in-4° ;
Lettres à l’auteur du Supplément au Dictionnaire de Moréri,,, in-12 de 117 pages.
Notice des manuscrits de la bibliothèque de l’église métropolitaine de Rouen,ibid., 1746, in-12 de rom XXIII, 116 pages., 1762, in-8° de 119 pages ;
Lettres sur l’Encyclopédie pour servir de supplément aux sept volumes de ce dictionnaire, Amsterdam, 1764, in-8°; he only reports errors in geography, history and chronology.
Lettre à l’abbé Goujet, contenant de nouvelles remarques sur lsotta, femme savante d’Italie, dans le tome 5 des Mémoires d’Artigny.
Saas had Hippolytus redivivus reprinted; he provided notes to Fontette for the Bibliothèque historique de la France; We owe him much of the projectAffiches et annonces de la haute et basse Normandie, where he contributed several articles. Saas started under the name Anti-Moreéri'', a much larger work. The manuscript, forming 625 pages in-fol., extended only on the first five letters of the alphabet, mainly on TA. It passed into the hands of Drouet, who intended to make use of for a supplement.
