This post is for all of you who have not actually seen a physical copy of Migne's Latin and Greek works. It is a sight to see.
I visited the library at DTS today to take some pictures of a volume, as I mentioned yesterday that I would. Since I had my camera I figured I would take some pics of the set of Migne that DTS owns. It's hard to realize how much Migne published without seeing the actual output. Following is a view of the bookshelf from the right (and look on the right-hand bookshelf), then from the left (look on the left-hand bookshelf). The black volumes are his set of Latin printings, the red are his Greek.
That is a lot of books, is it not? Migne published more than 160 volumes of Greek texts and over 200 volumes of Latin, both of Church Fathers and Christian writers. This work was all done in the 1800's, so all of this is public domain material. I bet these are some of the only printings of some of these works, and some have never been translated into English.
So what do they look like a little closer up? Well, I aim to please. The following is a picture of some of his Greek volumes:
Here are some of his Latin:
The pic I went to the library for today is the following (click on any to get a much bigger and better picture):
Migne is the man! I can't think of much that would be better to have at a library than this.
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Comments
The wall of volumes at Cambridge University Library is just as impressive. It's an amazing piece of work, all done by one man. Most of it has never been translated into English.
But of course it's more available today than it has ever been, with volumes on Google books and the transcriptions by Catholic and Greek scholars.
If I were a dot-com billionaire, I would probably fund a complete translation. I calculate that at 10c a word it would cost $20 per column, and most volumes have 1000 columns, so a volume should cost $10,000 to translate? There are 220 odd volumes in the PG, so that would cost $2.2m, or thereabouts. Even if we doubled it, at $5m to translate all of this into English, it wouldn't be a lot, would it?
It's a beautiful thing.