Petit, Louis

PETIT, LOUIS. - Assumptionist, archbishop of Athens, b. 21 Feb. 1868 at Viuz-la-Chiésaz (Savoy), d. 5 Nov. 1927 at Menton. A priest in 1891, in 1895 he was superior of the Greek Seminary and of the House of Oriental Studies, established at Kadi-Keui, ancient Chalcedon.

Devoting himself to the study of Byzantine ecclesiastical history, he succeeded in assembling a rich specialized library, now preserved in the Vatican Library. The journal Echos d'Orient, whose first issue appeared in Oct. 1897 and which he directed for more than ten years, represents only in part his scholarly activity. The fruit of research conducted with others in the monastery of Mount Athos were the Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes de l'Athos (Paris 1904), Les chartes des monastères grecs (5 vols., ibid. 1903-11). Having moved to Rome in 1908, his competence convinced Card. Gotti, then prefect of Propaganda, to propose him, in 1912, as archbishop of Athens and apostolic delegate for Greece, and influenced the foundation of the Congregation Pro Ecclesia Orientali and of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in 1917. In 1926 he left the office and received the titular archiepiscopal see of Corinth. He oversaw the continuation of Mansi's Amplissima collectio conciliorum: from 1905 to 1906 he prepared all the volumes relating to the synods of the Eastern Church, as well as the five on the Vatican Council of 1869-1870. His Bibliographie des acolouthies grecques, Brussels 1926, is also noteworthy.

Silvio Furlani