CORPUS CATHOLICORUM. - An ordered and complete collection of the historico-apologetico-dogmatic writings of Catholic authors of the 16th century (1517-1563) in response to the forgeries, attacks and denials of the Protestant reformers.
The idea of gathering such writings into a single grandiose work, compiled with scholarly intent and critical apparatus, to be set against the monumental Corpus Reformatorum, was launched by J. Greving (d. 1919) during the First World War (1915) and put into practice by him with the founding of the Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des C. C. Since 1919 this society has been overseeing the critical edition of the works of the principal Catholic theologians and polemicists, especially German, of the age of the Reformation, constituting the C. C. properly so called: 23 vols. up to 1941 (Werke katholischer Schriftsteller aus dem Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung). But alongside this publication, other collateral activities are being overseen, suited to giving as complete a view as possible of the thought of the age. Thus the publication is under way of critical studies concerning the religious history and theological doctrines of the age of the Reformation (Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte) and, beginning in 1927, of other studies concerning Catholic life and the struggles in the period of the Reformation (Katholisches Leben und Kämpfen im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung). In collaboration with Protestant historians, moreover, there is the intention of preparing the publication of the correspondence of the German humanists of the 16th century and the edition of a biographical dictionary of the principal Catholic and Protestant authors from 1515 to 1585.
Bibliography4 works
Vito Zolini