Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerce of the Abbé Migne [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by R Howard Bloch
God’s Plagiarist is inaccurately titled, since the “irregular commerce” in intellectual property committed repeatedly in the massive Patrologia Latina published by Migne in the mid-nineteenth century was not plagiarism, but rather piracy. It is perhaps more inevitable than ironic that the encyclopedic approach of the right-wing Migne to promoting and perpetuating Catholic tradition actually involved the usurpation of publishing authority for many of the component texts of his project.
Historian Howard Bloch only briefly treats Migne’s relationships to the ecclesiastical establishment, including his oppositional relationship to the hierarchy and his association with other clergy of questionable status. I would have enjoyed more detail on this feature of his career, especially given the tantalizing mention of his connection with occultist Alphonse Louis Constant (a.k.a. Eliphas Levi), but if I’m to find out more on that particular relationship, maybe I’ll seek in one of the sources regarding Constant.
Mostly, the book is concerned with the ways in which Migne belonged to the class of entrepreneurs who were developing the industrial and commercial aspects of mid-nineteenth-century France. Bloch often pauses to raise the question of the sincerity of the religious motivation for Migne’s capitalist tactics, and repeatedly dismisses the conundrum as unresolvable.
Overall, it’s a digestible monograph on the topic, but one that does more to orient the reader to a curiosity than to really illuminate the subject addressed.
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Amour Fou 