Title Page

PATROLOGIAE CURSUS COMPLETUS, SEU BIBLIOTHECA UNIVERSALIS, INTEGRA, UNIFORMIS, COMMODA, OECONOMICA, OMNIUM SS. PATRUM, DOCTORUM SCRIPTORUMQUE ECCLESIASTICORUM,

of the Latins or the Greeks, who flourished from the Apostolic age to the time of Innocent III (year 1216) for the Latins, and to the time of the Council of Florence (year 1439) for the Greeks: A chronological recension of all the monuments of Catholic tradition that have existed throughout the first fifteen centuries of the Church and beyond, compiled according to the most accurate editions, collated with several manuscripts and most carefully corrected; continually illustrated with dissertations, commentaries, and various readings; increased by works detected after the most ample editions which are owed to the last three centuries; provided with ordinary or even analytical indices following individual volumes or authors of any importance; adorned with chapters duly arranged within the text itself, as also with titles distinguishing the upper margin of individual pages and signifying the subject matter; amplified by works both doubtful and apocryphal, but possessing some authority in relation to ecclesiastical tradition; enriched with two hundred and forty indices under every aspect, namely: alphabetical, chronological, analytical, analogical, statistical, synthetic, etc., exhibiting things and authors in such a way that all the Holy Fathers lie open not only to the scholar, but also to those involved in business, and—if there be any—even to the lazy and the ignorant; but especially with two immense and general indices: the first of subjects, by consulting which one may ascertain at a single glance whatever has been written by not only such and such a Father, but by each of the Fathers, without any exception, on any theme; the second of Sacred Scripture, from which it is obvious for the reader to discover which Fathers, and in what places of their works, have commented on the individual verses of each of the books of Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse:

A most accurate edition, easily preferable to all others if one considers the sharpness of the characters, the quality of the paper, the integrity of the text, the perfection of the correction, the variety yet number of the republished works, the form of the volumes, which is most convenient and constant for the entire course of the Patrologia, the smallness of the price, and especially this collection, unique, methodical, and chronological, of six hundred fragments and short works hitherto scattered here and there, or even unpublished, but now collected for the first time in our library from works and manuscripts pertaining to all ages, places, languages, and forms, and miraculously making a single work from countless writings that constitute the Catholic tradition.

SERIES GRAECA PRIOR,

The Patrologia, like the Church itself, is divided into two parts: one, namely, the Latin; the other, the Greco-Latin. Both parts are now almost entirely written out. The Latin, standing in its own bulk of two hundred and twenty-two volumes, sells for one thousand one hundred and ten francs. The Greek has been committed to print in a double edition.1 The former includes the Greek text together with a lateral Latin version and, for the first Greek series, does not exceed one hundred and nine volumes. The latter, however, exhibits only the Latin version and is therefore contained within fifty-five volumes. The second, Greco-Latin series will probably not exceed sixty volumes; while its purely Latin version will be completed in thirty volumes. Each Greco-Latin volume is sold for only eight francs, each purely Latin one for five: it will be necessary, however, for the buyer to purchase the entire collection—whether Latin or Greek—in order to enjoy this benefit of price; otherwise, the varying sizes and difficulties of each volume will command different prices. Nevertheless, if anyone buys the Greco-Latin collection complete and separately, or the same translated from Greek into Latin, then they will obtain each volume for only nine or six francs respectively. These conditions apply to future series of the Patrologia, if time does not fail us for printing them.

PATROLOGIA GRAECA VOLUME LXXXI.

Printed and sold by J.-P. Migne, Publisher, in the street called d'Amboise, formerly near the gate of Paris commonly called d'Enfer, or Petit-Montrouge, but now within the walls of Paris. 1864.

IMPORTANT NOTICE

According to one of the providential laws that govern the world, works above the ordinary are rarely produced without contradictions more or less strong and numerous. The *Ateliers Catholiques* could scarcely escape this divine stamp of their utility. At times their existence or importance has been denied; at times it has been said they were closed or about to be. Yet they have pursued their career for 21 years, and the productions that emerge from them become increasingly serious and polished: thus it seems certain that, barring events that no human prudence could foresee or prevent, these *Ateliers* will not close until the *Bibliothèque du Clergé* is finished in its 2,000 quarto volumes. The past seems a sure guarantee of the future, for what there is to hope or to fear. ^A However, among the calumnies against which they have struggled, two have been continually repeated because, being more capital, their effect entailed more consequences. Small and ignorant competitors have therefore endeavored, through their correspondence or their travelers, to repeat everywhere that our Editions were poorly corrected and poorly printed. Unable to attack the substance of the Works, which for the most part are the masterpieces of Catholicism recognized as such in all times and all countries, they had to fall back on the form in its most serious aspect: correction and printing; indeed, even masterpieces would have only half their value if the text were inexact or illegible.

It is very true that, in the beginning, an unheard-of success in the annals of Typography having forced the Publisher to have recourse to machinery, in order to proceed more rapidly and provide the works at a lower price, four volumes of the double Course of Holy Scripture and Theology were printed with the insufficient correction provided in printing houses for almost everything published; it is also true that a certain number of other volumes, belonging to various publications, were printed either too dark or too light. But, since those distant times, the machines have yielded the work to hand presses, and the impression that results, without being luxury—since luxury would clash with works of such a nature—is perfectly suitable in all respects. As for the correction, it is a fact that it has never been carried so far in any edition, ancient or contemporary. And how could it be otherwise, after all the pains and expenses we undergo to purge our proofs of all errors? The custom in typography, even in the best houses, is to correct only two proofs and to collate a third with the second, without having in any way prepared the author's manuscript.

^B In the *Ateliers Catholiques* the difference is almost immeasurable. By means of correctors grayed under the harness, whose typographic eye is pitiless toward errors, we begin by preparing the copy from one end to the other without omitting a single word. We then read in the first proof with the copy thus prepared. We read in the second in the same manner, but collating with the first. We do the same in the third, collating with the second. We act likewise in the fourth, collating with the third. We repeat the same operation in the fifth, collating with the fourth. These collations have the purpose of seeing if any of the errors noted at the office by the correctors have escaped the pressmen on the stone and metal. After these five complete readings, checked against one another, and outside of the preparation mentioned above, comes a revision, and often two or three; then we stereotype. The stereotyping having been performed, and consequently the purity of the text finding itself immobilized, we perform with the copy a new reading from one end of the proof to the other, we submit it to a new revision, and the printing only arrives after these innumerable precautions.

Also, there are at Montrouge correctors of all nations and in greater numbers than in twenty-five printing houses of Paris combined! Also, the correction there costs as much as the composition, while elsewhere it costs only a tenth! Also, finally, although the assertion may appear rash, the accuracy obtained by so much expense and care makes it so that most of the Editions of the *Ateliers Catholiques* leave far behind them those even of the famous Benedictines Mabillon and Montfaucon and the famous Jesuits Petau and Sirmond. If one compares, indeed, any pages of their editions with ours that correspond to them, in Greek as in Latin, one will be convinced that the implausible is a reality. ^C Moreover, these eminent scholars, more preoccupied with the meaning of the texts than with the typographic part and not being professional correctors, read, not what the proofs carried, but what should be there, their high intelligence supplementing the errors of the edition. Furthermore, the Benedictines, like the Jesuits, worked almost always on manuscripts, a perpetual cause of the multiplicity of errors, while the *Ateliers Catholiques*, whose hallmark is above all to revive Tradition, operate most often on printed works.

The Rev. Fr. De Buch, Jesuit Bollandist of Brussels, wrote to us some time ago that he had been unable to find, in eighteen months of study, a single error in our Latin Patrology. Mr. Denzinger, Professor of Theology at the University of Würzburg, and Mr. Reissmann, Vicar General of the same city, informed us, under the date of July 19, that they were likewise unable to uncover a single error, whether in the Latin or in the Greek of our double Patrology. Finally, the learned Fr. Pitra, Benedictine of Solesmes, and M. Bonetty, director of the *Annales de philosophie chrétienne*, challenged to convince us of even one typographic error, were forced to admit that we had not overpresumed our perfect correction. In the Clergy there are good Latinists and good Hellenists, and, what is rarer, very positive and practical men; well! we promise them a bonus of 25 centimes for each error they discover in any one of our volumes, especially in the Greek ones.

Despite what precedes, the Publisher of the complete Courses, feeling more and more the importance and even the necessity of a perfect correction for a work to be truly useful and estimable, has been dedicating himself for more than a year, and is resolved to dedicate himself until the end, to a long, painful, and expensive operation, namely: the entire and universal revision of his innumerable plates. Thus each of his volumes, as he puts it back on the press, is corrected word for word from one end to the other. Forty men are or will be occupied with this for 10 years, and a sum that could not be less than half a million francs is devoted to this important control. In this way, the Publications of the *Ateliers Catholiques*, which already distinguished themselves among all by the superiority of their correction, will have no rivals in this regard, in any time or any country; for what publisher could and would want to dedicate himself AFTER THE FACT to such gigantic works at such an exorbitant price? ^D One must certainly be deeply penetrated by a divine vocation to this effect to recoil neither before the toil nor the expense, especially when learned Europe proclaims that no volumes have ever been edited with such accuracy as those of the *Bibliothèque universelle du Clergé*. The present volume is among those revised, and all those that will be in the future will carry this note. Consequently, to judge the productions of the *Ateliers Catholiques* regarding correction, one must take only those that will carry at the head the notice traced here. We acknowledge only this edition and those that will follow on our metal plates thus corrected. It was once believed that stereotyping immobilized errors, given that a metal plate is not elastic; not at all, it introduces perfection, for the means have been found to correct it until the extinction of errors. The Hebrew has been reviewed by M. Drach, the Greek by Greeks, the Latin and the French by the primary correctors of the capital in these languages.

We have the consolation of being able to end this notice with the following reflections: Finally, our example has ended by shaking the major publications in Italy, in Germany, in Belgium and in France, by the Greek Canons of Rome, the Gerdil of Naples, the Saint Thomas of Parma, the Religious Encyclopedia of Munich, the collection of the declarations on the rites of Brussels, the Bollandists, the Suarez and the Spicilegium of Paris. Until now, people had known how to reprint only works of short breath. The quarto volumes, where...

CATHOLIC TRADITION. FIFTH CENTURY, YEAR 458. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF THEODORET, BISHOP OF CYRUS.

THEODORET, BISHOP OF CYRUS: COMPLETE WORKS

Edited after the recension of Jacques Sirmond, expanded with Greek texts from codices, utilizing earlier editions, with the Latin version revised, and with the inclusion of textual variants and extensive indices, by Johann Ludwig Schulze, Professor of Greek and Oriental Languages at the Friedrichs-Universität (Halle, 1769 and following years).

To which is added the *Auctarium Theodoriti* formerly prepared by Jean Garnier.

Supervised and newly revised by J.-P. Migne.

Bibliothèque du Clergé Universel [Universal Library of the Clergy], or Editor of the complete courses in the individual branches of ecclesiastical science.

VOLUME TWO.

Five volumes are sold for 60 French francs.

Printed and sold by J.-P. Migne, Editor, in the street called d'Amboise, formerly near the gate of Paris commonly called d'Enfer, or Petit-Montrouge, but now within the walls of Paris.

1864