The study of the Church Fathers is briefly known as patrology. It embraces all ancient Christian writers down to Gregory the Great (d. 604) or Isidore of Seville (d. 636) in the West, and John of Damascus (d. 749) in the East. In our own days, the study has been pursued with a new attentiveness. In theology, a one-sided effort to exploit the Fathers according to scholastic viewpoints has given way to a more scientific investigation of…