CORPUS CATHOLICORUM. – An ordered and complete collection of the historical-apologetic-dogmatic writings of Catholic authors of the sixteenth century (1517–1563) in response to the falsifications, attacks, and denials of the Protestant reformers.
The idea of collecting these writings in a single grand work, prepared with scholarly aims 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 through the foundation 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—above all German—of the Reformation era, constituting the C. C. in the proper sense: 23 vols. up to 1941 (Werke katholischer Schriftsteller aus dem Zestalter der Glaubensspaltung). Alongside this publication, however, other related activities are being undertaken, intended to provide as complete a view as possible of the thought of the period. Thus, the publication is under way of critical studies concerning the religious history and theological doctrines of the Reformation era (Reformationgeschichtliche Studien und Texte) and, beginning in 1927, of other studies concerning Catholic life and struggles during the Reformation period (Katholisches Leben und Kämpfen im Zestalter der Glaubensspaltung). In collaboration with Protestant historians, there are also plans to prepare the publication of the correspondence of sixteenth-century German humanists and the edition of a biographical dictionary of the principal Catholic and Protestant authors from 1515 to 1585.
(photo U.S.I.S.)
CORPUS CHRISTI - Cattedrale.