Jean Baptiste Pitra

Jean Baptiste Pitra (Champforgueil, near Autun, 1812 – Rome, 1889) was a French Benedictine scholar devoted to the recovery of manuscripts and the study of early Christian literature and Eastern liturgy. He is remembered today above all for his history of Byzantine hymnography and for the canon law of the Eastern Churches.

Ordained a priest in 1836, he joined Solesmes in 1841 under Abbot Guéranger, and in 1843 was appointed prior of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, where he collaborated with Migne on the patrologies. Between 1845 and 1850 he searched for Greek and Latin codices for the library of Solesmes, many of which were published in the Spicilegium solesmense. In 1860, during a stay in St Petersburg, he rediscovered the metrical and strophic structure of medieval Greek liturgical poetry, which he made known in 1863 and developed in Hymnographie de l'église grecque (Rome, 1867). He was created a cardinal in 1863 and in 1869 directed the Vatican Libraries.

His legacy endures in his studies of Eastern canon law and in his collections of ancient texts. It appears that Franz Joseph Mone already knew the principles of structure of Greek verse; it has not been proven that Pitra knew of those results, nor that he claimed the discovery for himself, although his exposition was more methodical and clear, and he disseminated the findings with greater effectiveness.