Patrologia Latina Database

The definitive tool for Medieval scholarship

No single collection of Western philosophical and theological writings is comparable to the Patrologiae Cursus Completus, the extraordinary achievement of the 19^th-century scholar and priest, Jacques-Paul Migne. The Patrologia is divided into the Patrologia Latina and the Patrologia Graeco-Latina.

Covering the works of the Latin Fathers from Tertullian around 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216.  Digitized and fully-searchable including Unicode functionality to allows full display of diacritics and Greek keyword searching also features: 

• 221 volumes
• Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina (BHL) reference numbers
• most major and minor Latin authors
• the most influential works of late ancient and early medieval theology, philosophy, history, and literature.
• prefatory material
• original texts 
• illustrations
• critical apparatus
• MARC records

 

Portrait of Jacques-Paul Migne (1800-1875), French theologian and publisher. Engraving by E. Tailland..

Cross Search Acta Sanctorum

Web subscribers who own both Patrologia Latina Database and Acta Sanctorum Database are able to search across both databases at the same time, in a single search. The addition of BHL reference numbers to Patrologia Latina Database enables direct comparison of textual passages between the two resources. In addition, Brills Madiae Latinitatis Lexicon Minor is available to users of the cross-searchable site, providing information that is not available in any other electronic format.  Jan Frederik Niermeyer's Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus is a practical lexicon for succinct information much used by Medieval History students. It has proved to be invaluable to medievalists for almost 50 years. The dictionary provides French and English translations for every entry of a Medieval Latin concept, and all entries are contextualized with relevant text passages. The combined resources of these databases offer scholars unprecedented opportunities to further their research in early European social history and the development of Christianity, from the foundation of the Church to the Reformation.