Jacques Paul Migne

Who was Jacques Paul Migne?

Jacques Paul Migne was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a universal library for the Catholic priesthood.

He was born at Saint-Flour, Cantal and studied theology at Orléans. He was ordained in 1824 and placed in charge of the parish of Puiseaux, in the diocese of Orléans, where his uncompromisingly Catholic and royalist sympathies did not coincide with local patriotism and the new regime of the Citizen-King. In 1833, after falling out with his bishop over a pamphlet he had published, he went to Paris, and on 3 November started a journal L'Univers religieux, which he intended to keep free of political influence: it quickly collected 1800 subscribers. He edited it for three years.