Authorities.—The earliest writer on patristics was Jerome, whose book De viris illustribus gives a brief account of one hundred and thirty-five Church writers, beginning with St Peter and ending with himself. Jerome’s work was continued successively by Gennadius of Marseilles, Isidore of Seville, and Ildefonsus of Toledo; the last-named writer brings the list down to the middle of the 7th century. Since the revival of learning books on the fathers have been numerous; among the more recent and most accessible of these we may mention Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography, Hauck-Herzog’s Realencyklopädie, Bardenhewer’s Patrologie and Geschichte der altkirchlichen Litteratur, Harnack’s Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bei Eusebius and Ehrard’s Die altchristliche Litteratur und ihre Erforschung. A record of patristic collections and editions down to 1839 may be found in Dowling’s Notitia Scriptorum SS. Patrum. The contents of the volumes of Migne’s patrologies are given in the Catalogue général des livres de l’abbé Migne, and a useful list in alphabetical order of the writers in the Greek Patrologia has been compiled by Dr J.B. Pearson (Cambridge, 1882). Migne’s texts are not always satisfactory, but since the completion of his great undertaking two important collections have been begun on critical lines—the Vienna edition of the Latin Church writers,[12] and the Berlin edition of the Greek writers of the ante-Nicene period.[13]
For English readers there are three series of translations from the fathers, which cover much of the ground; the Oxford Library of the Fathers, the Ante Nicene Christian Library and the Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Satisfactory lexicons of patristic Greek and Latin are still a desideratum: but assistance may be obtained in the study of the Greek fathers from Suicer’s Thesaurus, the Lexicon of Byzantine Greek by E.A. Sophocles, and the Lexicon Graecum suppletorium et dialecticum of Van Herwerden; whilst the new great Latin Lexicon, published by the Berlin Academy, is calculated to meet the needs of students of Latin patristic literature. For a fuller list of books useful to the reader of the Greek and Latin fathers see H.B. Swete’s Patristic Study (2nd ed., 1902).
(H. B. S.)
[1] See Buxtorf, s.v. Abh, and cf. the title of the tract Pirke Aboth (ed. Taylor, p. 3).
[2] Polyc. Mart. 8.
[3] Studia biblica, iv. p. 273.
[4] In his book De viris illustribus.
[5] The term patres apostolici is due to the patristic scholars of the 17th century: see Lightfoot, St Clement of Rome, i. p. 3. “Sub-apostolic” is perhaps a more accurate designation.
[6] The editio princeps of Niceta’s works was published by Dr A.E. Burn in 1905.