The patristic period of the church’s history is generally held to begin with the close of the apostolic age; but historians are not agreed as to the date at which it may be said to have closed. Some Roman Catholic writers speak of Bernard, who died in 1153, as having been the “last of the fathers,” while Greek patristic is often brought down so far as to the council ofFlorence. But it is usual to speak of the scholastic period as having begun with Anselm; and there seems to be no good reason for removing Bernard from the list of the schoolmen. As no very important author either in Latin or in Greek can be assigned to the centuries immediately preceding Anselm, it may therefore be said, roughly speaking, that the patristic period practically closed for the Eastern Church with Joannes Damascenus, and for the Western with Gregory the Great.

The patri.stic canon has never been quite definitely fixed, and no precise line of demarcation can be drawn between those ancient teachers of Christianity who are and those who are not entitled to be reckoned “fathers.” The name is often bestowed on some whose title when viewed from the standpoint of rigid orthodoxy cannot but be regarded as somewhat doubtful. While Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia have obviously no title to be called “fathers,” it has not been thought necessary to withhold the honourable appellation from Origen or Tertullian. The authors usually named as fathers may be arranged according to chronology into three groups, called respectively the apostolic, the primitive, and the post-Nicene. The apostolic fathers, that is to say, the fathers who were to some extent contemporary with the apostles, are Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, the author of the Shepherd of Hernias, and the author of the Epistle of Barnabas (see Apostolic Fathers). The chief primitive or ante-Nicene fathers are Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, Tertullian, Gregory Thaumaturgus. Among the post-Nicene fathers may°be mentioned Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Basil, Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyril of Alexandria, Epiphanius, Gregory of Nazianzum, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Great, Hilary, Jerome, and Leo. A distinction is usually recognized between the patres and those who were merely scriptores ecclesiastici, and it is to the latter category that such writers as Eusebius and Socrates the historians most properly belong. The Eastern and the Western Church have each four authors of note whom they recognize as fathers par excellence. Those of the Eastern are Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nazianzum. Those of the Western are Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory,—the fathers respectively of her monastic system, of her sacerdotal authority, of her scientific theology, and of her popular religion (Milman, Latin Christianity, b. it c. 4).

The study of the fathers has sometimes been regarded as constituting a distinct discipline called patrology or patristic, which, however, practically resolves itself into the church history of the first six centuries. For information on the individual fathers and on the influence they exerted upon one another and upon the thought and life of the church the reader is referred to the various articles, biographical, archaeological, and historical, relating to that period.

The much-disputed question as to the authority of the fathers resolves itself into the more general one as to the place of tradition considered as a source of dogma and a rule of life apart from the scriptures (see vol. v. p. 759). There seems to be no sufficient evidence for the statement made by Turrettin and others to the effect that some Catholic writers set the writings of the fathers individually on a level with the canonical scriptures; and it is certainly an exaggeration to say that Cardinal Cajetan regarded them as having no authority at all. The Tridentine doctrine is that no one is entitled to interpret scripture in a sense contrary to the interpretations of holy mother church or to the unanimoιιs consent of the fathers. Roman Catholic writers accordingly as a rule attach comparatively little weight to the peculiarities of individual fathers, and hold themselves committed to nothing that is not established by what they consider to be unanimous and unvarying tradition. They distinguish, moreover, between the function of the fathers as witnesses and their function as instructors. As witnesses to the tradition and teaching of the church, they give testimony which is binding on the Catholic conscience; as independent teachers, they are entitled to be listened to with deference and respect, but their interpretations and arguments are to be freely accepted or as freely rejected according to their merits. Protestant writers, while fully admitting the merits, literary and other, of many of the fathers, usually dwell much upon the admitted fact of their fallibility, and strive to show that the attempt to establish an unambiguous tradition by their means is in very many cases much more illusory than Catholic writers are disposed to allow. They do not, however, deny that on many important points there is such a thing as a consensus patrum; but this they regard as having at best no other authority than what is merely human and ecclesiastical, the Bible alone being the supreme rule of faith and life. The fundamental Protestant antithesis to the Tridentine doctrine according to which the canonical books and the traditions preserved by the church are to be received and reverenced “pari pietatis effectu ac reverentia”

is very clearly expressed in the sixth Article of the Church of England which declares that “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein nor may be proved thereby is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”

The first writer in patrology may be said to have been Jerome, himself one of the greatest of the fathers. His work, De Viris Illustribus, sive Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, was reprinted, along with the similar works of Gennadius of Marseilles, Isidore of Seville, and lldefonso of Toledo, by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica (1718). Among modern writers on this subject Mohler (Patrologie, 1842), Alzog (Grundriss der Patrologie, 1866), Engelhardt (Littcrarische Leitfaden zu Vorlesungen über die Patristik, 1823), and J. E. L. Danz (Initia doctrinae patristicoe, 1839) may be referred to. See also Cave’s Apostolici (1677) and Ecclesiastici (1683), Ittigii Tractatus de Bitt. Patr. (Lips.. 1707), and Dowling’s Notitia Scriptorum SS. Patrum (Oxon. 1839). The most important collective editions of the fathers are the Latin Magna Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum of De la Bigne (Paris, 1575), of which the Maxima Bibliotheca (Lyons, 1677) is an improved reprint, and the exhaustive Patrologies cursus completus of Migne, in which the collection of Latin authors, brought down to the time of Innocent III., occupies 221 volumes (Paris, 1844-1855), while the Greek division, extending to the council of Florence, is completed in 166 vols. (Paris, 1857-1866).