The Library
1693 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
201–300
1 work
c. 235–245; survives in fragments
Greek
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185–c. 253
The Old Testament laid out in six parallel columns — Hebrew, Hebrew in Greek letters, and four Greek versions — with marks showing where the Septuagint added to or omitted from the Hebrew.
301–400
1 work
370–419
Latin
Jerome · c. 347–420
A hundred and fifty letters of scholarship, spiritual counsel, travel, and ferocious quarrel, including the dream in which he is accused of being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian.
401–500
1 work
426–427
Latin
Retractationes
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A review of his own ninety-three books in order of composition, correcting what he now thought wrong and explaining what he had meant.
801–900
1 work
c. 858–886
Greek
Photius of Constantinople · c. 815–c. 893
Correspondence and a long series of answers to theological and literary questions, including a famous letter of advice to the newly converted prince of Bulgaria.
1501–1600
2 works
printed 1514–1517; issued 1520
Latin
Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros and his team · 1436–1517
The Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin in parallel columns, with grammars and a Hebrew dictionary, produced at a Spanish university by Jewish converts and Greek scholars.
1559–1574
Latin
Matthias Flacius Illyricus and colleagues · 1520–1575
Church history century by century, assembled by a team working from manuscripts, arguing that the papacy gradually corrupted an originally pure church.
1601–1700
5 works
1588–1607
Latin
Annales Ecclesiastici
Cesare Baronio · 1538–1607
Church history year by year from the incarnation to 1198, compiled from the Vatican archives as a Catholic answer to the Magdeburg Centuries.
begun 1643; still in progress
Latin
Acta Sanctorum
Jean Bolland and the Bollandists
A critical edition of the lives of the saints arranged by feast day, with the sources weighed and the legendary material identified as such.
1650–1654
Latin
James Ussher · 1581–1656
A chronology of the world from creation, dated by astronomy and by the reigns of kings, placing the first day in the evening preceding 23 October 4004 BC.
1653–1657
Latin
Brian Walton and colleagues · c. 1600–1661
The Bible in nine languages in parallel columns — Hebrew, Samaritan, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Persian — with a critical apparatus of variants.
1691
French
Jean Mabillon · 1632–1707
A defence of scholarship as a legitimate monastic work against a Trappist abbot who insisted monks should do manual labour and pray, not read.
11 of 1693 works