PITRA, JEAN-BAPTISTE. – Benedictine, cardinal, librarian of the Holy Roman Church, born at Champforgueil (department of Saône-et-Loire) on 10 August 1812, died in Rome on 9 February 1889. Initially a professor at the Seminary of Autun, he entered the monastery of Solesmes in 1841, was named prior of St-Germain in Paris in 1843, and there compiled the list and selected the editions of the Greek and Latin Fathers for the two *Patrologies* of Migne. From 1843 to 1850, he traveled to repair the financial ruin of Solesmes. He was called to Rome in 1858, traveled to Russia and Austria (1859–60), was created cardinal in 1861, appointed librarian of the Holy Church in 1861, cardinal-bishop of Frascati in 1879, and of Porto and Santa Rufina in 1884. He died poor, as he had lived, in work and solitude.
*Works*: P.’s vast output follows the different stages of his career and did not achieve great renown in his time. While teaching at Autun, he acquired and published the inscription of Pettorii (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 journal founded by the abbot of Solesmes (vols. II–IV, 1845–46), and on *L'Univers* (1851). The fruit of his years of travel (1845–50) and visits to libraries includes: *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. Bolandistes* (ibid. 1850), and *Vie du p. Libermann* (ibid. 1855).
P.’s major work revolves around three principal interests: the Fathers of the Church, Byzantine canonists, and Greek hymnographers. Among his publications are: *Spicilegium Solesmense* (4 vols., ibid. 1852–58), which includes, among other works, the *Clef du* (pseudo) *Méliot*, a fragment of Papias, the *Carmen apologeticum* of Commodian, the *Antirretica* of Nicephorus of Constantinople, and the *Monumenta Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae* (discipline, monastic institutions, and liturgy); *Iuris ecclesiastici Graecorum historia et monumenta* (2 vols., Rome 1864–68); *Hymnographiae Ecclesiae Graecae* (ibid. 1867), in which he expounds the secret of ecclesiastical Greek poetry that he had discovered; *Analecta sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata* (4 vols., Paris, Frascati, Venice 1876–83); later he added a fifth volume: *Analecta sacra et classica* (Paris 1888), containing passages from Christian authors of the 4th and 5th centuries drawn from the *Collectanea Patrum*; the sixth volume, reserved for hymns of Greek melodes, remained unpublished; the seventh: *Iuris ecclesiastici Graecorum selecta paralipomena* (ibid. 1891), was published posthumously by his secretary, Msgr. A. Battandier; the eighth, outside the series (Montecassino 1881), contains the writings of St. Hildegard; *Analecta novissima* (2 vols., Frascati 1885–88), of which the first contains *De epistolis et regestis Romanorum Pontificum*; the second: *Tusculana*, contains unpublished writings of four French bishops of Frascati: Odo of Ourscamp, Odo of Châteauroux, James of Vitry, and Bertrand de la Tour.