MONAKCHIANISM.
PATRISTICS, PATROLOGY.
Early Attempts at Treatment (§ 1). Medieval and Lutheran Work (§ 2). Roman Catholic Labors (§ 3). Nineteenth-Century Work (§ 4). Conceptions of Patristics and Patrology (§ 5) Scope of the Department (§ 6). Methodology (§ 7).
[Patristics and Patrology are the names of that department of theology which gives instruction concermng the lives, writings, and theological doctrines of the Church Fathers, and all else which has a direct bearing upon the study of the Church Fathers. If a distinction is to be made between the two names, then patrology concerns the external history, lives, etc., of the Fathers; patristics, their doctrinal teachings.]
Among the subjects treated in his " Ecclesiastical History " Eusebius included a report of writers who bore testimony to the Scriptures, and he thus laid the foundation upon which later authors built. But the first to conceive and carry through a history of Christian literature was Jerome with
i. Early his De viris illustrious (best editions by Attempts at C. A. Bernoulli, Freiburg, 1895, and Treatment. E. C. Richardson, Leipsic, 1896; Eng. transl. in NPNF, 2 ser., iii. 359-384), at the suggestion of the prefect Prsetorius Dexter, 392, revised the same year. Jerome had in mind to do for Christian teachers and authors what Suetonius had done for other notables of antiquity, and at the same time to show, against Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, that among the Christians also there were noted scholars. He included in his list 135 writers, including three Jews (Philo, Josephus, and Justus of Tiberias), and heretics and schismatics; but he was very closely dependent upon the work of Eusebius mentioned above and his Chronicon. Even though the scientific value of Jerome's work is not high, he was the first to blaze the path in this direction. But he found numerous continuators,
Fatristics
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
such as Gennadius of Marseilles, Isidor of Seville, and Ildephonsus of Toledo (qq.v.). In the Middle Ages there were lacking for independent study of this character both sources and helps and the historical interest. "While patristic works were then copied, excerpted, worked into exegetical Catenae (q.v.), or collected into dogmatic " Sentences," knowledge of the Greek Fathers, particularly, remained limited, and the methods employed were uncritical. As a learned collection of notices, however, the Bibliotheca of Photius (q.v.) is inestimable, gathering as it does from 280 heathen and Christian authors. Outside of this, histories of literatures in the East were wanting; but in the West Jerome found imitators and continuators throughout the Middle Ages: Honorius of Autun (q.v.) wrote De luminaribus ecclesice, the limits being the apostles and Anselm of Canterbury; Sigebert of Gembloux (q.v.), who in his Scriptores ecclesiastici covered the period from the apostles to his own time; the so-called Anonymus MeUicensis, who wrote about 1135 a De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis; the anonymous author of De viris illustribus; and Johannes Heidenberg (d. 1516), who wrote a Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (ed. princeps, Cologne, 1494), which showed diligent if uncritical use of sources, beginning with Clement of Rome and ending with the year 1492.
The last century of the Middle Ages saw the necessity of going behind ecclesiastical and scholastic tradition to the purer sources of Christian knowledge in Scripture and the Fathers. Gerson was a leader in this direction. But especially in- 2. Medieval fluential was the Humanistic moveand Luther- ment of the fifteenth century, which an Work, awakened historical and critical interest, while the art of printing contributed no little. Patristic writings were discovered and edited, at first the Latin Fathers, then the Greek. Learned Humanists and theologians (Erasmus, OEcolampadius, Beatus Rhenanus) and printers (the Stephens) applied themselves to the work. The Reformation also helped through its opposition to scholasticism and traditionalism, but used its powers in an apologetic or polemic fashion (CEcolampadius and Melanchthon). Evangelical theologians of the second half of the sixteenth century were known for patristic learning (Matthias Flaccius, q.v.; Michael Neander, d. 1595; Martin Chemnitz, q.v.; Johannes Schopf, d. 1621; and Abraham Scultetus, d. 1624), and left works upon the subject. Lutheran workers in this field in the seventeenth century, who followed the old " Nomenclators," were Johann Gerhard (q.v.), who began with Hernias and closed with Bellarmin; Johann Hiilsemann, with Patrologia (ed. J. A. Scherzer, Leipsic, 1670); Johann Christoph Meelfiihrer, with a Corona patrum; Johann Gottfried Olearius, with Abacus patrologicus (Jena, 1673).
Meanwhile the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in its monastic orders, was stimulated to work in this field, especially the Benedictine congregation of St. Maur (see Saint Mauh, Congregation of), which has gained deservedly high reputation for its work, as for example in the as yet unsurpassed edition of Augustine. Individual laborers from this order were Jean Luc d'Achery (q.v.), Jacques du
Frische (d. 1693), Jean Mabillon Thierry Ruinart,
Rene" Massuet (qq.v.), A. A. Touttee (d. 1719)'
Jean Martianay (q.v.), Pierre Coustant (d. 1721),
Denis N. Le Nourry (d. 1724), Denis
3. Roman de Sainte-Merthe (d. 1725), Julien
Catholic Gamier (q.v.), Charles de la Rue (d.
Labors. 1739), Bernard de Montfaucon and Prudence Maran (qq.v.), and Charles Clemencet (d. 1778). From the Jesuits were Fronton du Due (q.v.), Jakob Gretser (d. 1625), Jan Bolland (see Bolland, Jan, and the Bollandists) . Still others were Jean Gamier (d. 1681), Frangois Combefis, Johannes Baptista Cotelerius, and Etienne Baluze (qq.v.). Especially characteristic of this period were the collections, such as that of Marguerin de la Bigne (q.v) and the great Maxima bibliotheca veterum patrum (27 vols., Lyons, 1575-79), and notably that of Andrea Gallandi {Bibliotheca veterum patrum antiquorumque scriptorum (14 vols., Venice, 1765-81). There is also the gigantic work, the Acta sanctorum (see Acta Martyrum, Acta Sanctorum) ; and not to be forgotten are the labors of the Assemani (q.v.) in the Bibliotheca orientalis, dealing with eastern literature. There were also original investigations and treatises such as those by Bellarmine (q.v.), Louis Ellies Du Pin (qq.v.) in Nouvelle Bibliotheque (58 vols., Paris, 1686-1704), a work in which critical processes are applied to the material as a whole and in its particulars with a certainty which deserves recognition. The work displays both great diligence and a regard for subjects which one would not expect a history of literature to cover, such as the history of councils. On the ecclesiastical side the free position of Du Pin, especially in matters of dogma, proved a shock; Bossuet tried in vain to have the Sorbonne censure his work, but the archbishop of Paris was convinced of the personal orthodoxy of the author. The first five volumes were placed on the Index July 1, 1693, and the decree was extended to the entire work by the decree of May 10, 1757. The work was attacked by the Benedictines, in whose interest Matthieu Petit-Didier issued his Remarques sur la Bibliotheque des
Monsieur Du Pin (3 vols., Paris, 1691-96), while, from the remains of Richard Simon, Souciet published a sharp Critique de la Bibliotheque (4 vols., 1730). Meanwhile Remy Ceillier had published the eleventh volume of his Histoire ge'ne'rale des auteurs sacres (23 vols., Paris, 1729-63, new ed., 16 vols., 1858-69), the subtitle of which imitates the title of Du Pin's work, while the work in its entire tendency is opposed to the undertaking of Du Pin, though not without recognition of the conceded value of the same. The Benedictine Denis Nicolas Le Nourry (q.v.) produced his Apparatus ad bibliothecam maximam patrum veterum (2 vols., 1604-97). The Jansenist Le Nain de Tillemont issued his Memoires de Vhistoire ecclesiastique (16 vols., Paris, 1693-1712), a work the rich excursuses of which make it still a mine of wealth. The Benedictine Daniel Schram (d. 1797) carried as far as Ambrose and Epiphanius his Analysis operum sanctorum patrum (18 vols., Wiirzburg, 1780-96), while Gottfried Lumper issued Historia theologico-critica de vita sanctorum patrum trium priorum smcur
loTum (13 vols., Wiirzburg, 1783-99).