Migne

Migne, JACQUES PAUL, to whom Catholic theology owes a great debt of gratitude, was born at St Flour in Cantal, 25th October 1800, and died in Paris on his seventy-fifth birthday. He was educated at the seminary at Orleans, was ordained priest in 1824, and served some time as curate at Puiseaux in the diocese of Orleans. A difference with his bishop about a book on the liberty of the priests drove him to Paris in 1833, where he started L'Univers Religieux, afterwards called simply L'Univers. In 1836 he sold the paper, and soon after set up a great publishing house at Petit Montrouge, near Paris, which gave to the world, besides numerous other works of theology, Scripturæ sacræ cursus completus and Theologia cursus (each 28 vols. 1840–45), Collection des Orateurs sacrés (100 vols. 1846–48), Patrologia cursus completus (Latin series, 221 vols., 1844 et seq.; 2d ed. 1878 et seq.; 1st Greek series, 104 vols., 2d series, 58 vols., both since 1857), and the Encyclopédie théologique (171 vols. 1844–66). Unfortunately these editions were prepared too hastily, and moreover by superficial scholars, so that they do not possess critical value. The Archbishop of Paris, thinking that the Abbé Migne's great undertaking had become a mere commercial speculation, forbade it to be continued, and, when the indefatigable director refused to obey, suspended him. A great fire, more powerful than the veto of the archbishop, put an end to the work in February 1868.