PITRA, JEAN-BAPTISTE. - Benedictine, cardinal, librarian of the Holy Roman Church, b. at Champforgeuil (dept. of Saône-et-Loire) on 1 Aug. 1812, d. in Rome on 9 Feb. 1889. First a professor in the Seminary of Autun, he entered the monastery of Solesmes in 1841, was appointed prior of St-Germain in Paris in 1843, and there drew up the list and chose the editions of the Greek and Latin Fathers for Migne's two Patrologies; he traveled from 1845 to 1850 in order to remedy the financial disaster of Solesmes; he was called to Rome in 1858; he traveled in Russia and Austria (1859-60), was created cardinal in 1861, appointed librarian of the Holy Church in 1861, cardinal-bishop of Frascati in 1879, of Porto and S. Rufina in 1884; he died poor, as he had lived, in work and in solitude.
Works: the vast output of the Father follows the various stages of his career, and in his own times it did not have great resonance, not even among the learned. As a professor at Autun, he acquired and published the inscription of Pettorius (1839; cf. Spicilegium, I, 554-64) and prepared: Histoire de St Léger et de l'Église des Gaules au VIIᵉ siècle, published later (Paris 1846). He collaborated on L'auxiliaire catholique, a review founded by the abbot of Solesmes (vols. II-IV, 1845-1846) and on the Univers (1851); the fruit of his years of travel (1845-50) and of his visits to libraries are: Lettre au p. Lacordaire sur le couvent d'Unterlinden (in L'auxiliaire catholique, 4 [1846]), La Hollande catholique (Paris 1850), Etudes sur la collection des Actes des saints des PP. Bollandistes (ibid. 1850), Vie du p. Libermann (ibid. 1855).
The Father's major work revolves around three centers of interest: the Fathers of the Church, the Byzantine canonists, the Greek melodists: Spicilegium Solesmense (4 vols., ibid. 1852-58), which contains among other things the Clef du (pseudo) Méleton, a fragment of Papias, the Carmen apologeticum of Commodian, the Antirretica of Nicephorus of Constantinople and the Monumenta Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (discipline, monastic and liturgical institutions), Juris ecclesiastici Graecorum historia et monumenta (2 vols., Rome 1864-68); Hymnographie de l'Eglise grecque (ibid. 1867), in which he sets out the secret he discovered of Greek ecclesiastical poetry; Analecta sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata (4 vols., Paris, Frascati, Venice 1876-83); later he added to it vol. V: Analecta sacra et classica (Paris 1888) containing passages of Christian authors of the 4th and 5th centuries, derived from the Catenae Patrum; vol. VI, reserved for the hymns of Greek melodists, remained unpublished; vol. VII: Juris ecclesiastici Graecorum selecta paralipomena (ibid. 1891), was published posthumously by his secretary, Msgr. A. Battandier; vol. VIII, outside the series (Montecassino 1881), contains the writings of St. Hildegard; Analecta novissima (2 vols., Frascati 1885-88), of which vol. I contains: De epistolis et regestis Romanorum Pontificum; vol. II: Tusculana, contains the unpublished writings of four French bishops of Frascati: Odo of Curscamp, Odo of Chateaureux, James of Vitry, Bertrand de la Tour.
Bibliography5 works
Cirillo Vogel