CORPUS CATHOLICORUM

CORPUS CATHOLICORUM. – A systematic and complete collection of the historical, apologetic, and dogmatic writings of Catholic authors of the 16th century (1517–1563) in response to the distortions, attacks, and denials of the Protestant Reformers.

The idea of gathering such writings into a single monumental work, compiled with scholarly intent and critical apparatus to counter the monumental Corpus Reformatorum, was proposed by J. Greving (d. 1919) during World War I (1915) and put into practice by him through 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 of the Reformation era, especially German ones, which constitute the Corpus Catholicorum proper: 23 volumes by 1941 (*Werke katholischer Schriftsteller aus dem Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung*). Alongside this publication, other collateral activities are being pursued to provide as complete a view as possible of the thought of the period. Thus, the publication of critical studies on the religious history and theological doctrines of the Reformation era (*Reformationgeschichtliche Studien und Texte*) is underway, and since 1927, studies on Catholic life and struggles during the Reformation period (*Katholisches Leben und Kämpfen im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung*) have also been published. In collaboration with Protestant historians, the society also intends to prepare the publication of the correspondence of 16th-century German humanists and the compilation of a biographical dictionary of the principal Catholic and Protestant authors from 1515 to 1585.

CORPUS