Jacques-Paul Migne

Jacques Paul Migne (French: [miɲ]; 25 October 1800 – 24 October 1875) was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias, and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a universal library for the Catholic priesthood.

He was born at Saint-Flour, Cantal and studied theology at Orléans. He was ordained in 1824 and placed in charge of the parish of Puiseaux, in the diocese of Orléans, where his uncompromisingly Catholic and royalist sympathies did not coincide with local patriotism and the new regime of the Citizen-King. In 1833, after falling out with his bishop over a pamphlet he had published, he went to Paris, and on 3 November started a journal, L'Univers religieux, which he intended to keep free of political influence. It quickly gained 1,800 subscribers and he edited it for three years. (It afterwards became his co-editor Louis Veuillot's ultramontane organ, L'Univers.)

Migne believed in the power of the press and the value of information widely distributed. In 1836 he opened his great publishing house, Imprimerie Catholique, at Petit-Montrouge, in Paris's outlying 14th arrondissement. He published numerous religious works in rapid succession meant for lesser clergy at prices that insured wide circulation. The best known of these are: Scripturae sacrae cursus completus ("complete course in sacred scripture") which assembled a wide repertory of commentaries on each of the books of the Bible, and Theologiae cursus, each of them in 28 vols, 1840-5; Collection des auteurs sacrés (100 vols., 1846-8); Encyclopédie théologique (171 vols., 1844-6).

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