The Elephant in the Room: 114,000 Latin Theological Works

We don't lead with theology on this site. There's a reason for that—and it's worth explaining why the largest category in the Latin corpus is also the most complicated.

The Numbers

Theology and religious works constitute the single largest category in the USTC. Of the 503,000 Latin works printed between 1450 and 1700, approximately 114,000—nearly a quarter—are classified as religious.

For comparison:

• Law: ~68,000 works
• Philosophy: ~42,000 works
• Medicine: ~38,000 works
• Natural Philosophy (Science): ~31,000 works

Theology dwarfs everything else. And yet we've deliberately placed it lower in our presentation of the untranslated corpus. Here's why.

The Perception Problem

When people hear “500,000 untranslated Latin books,” many immediately think: medieval monks debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

This perception is unfair but understandable. Popular culture has trained us to see pre-modern religious thought as irrelevant scholastic hair-splitting. The phrase “angels on a pin” (which no medieval theologian ever actually debated) has become shorthand for useless intellectual activity.

If we lead with theology, we risk confirming this stereotype and losing the audience before we can explain what's actually in the corpus—and why it matters.

What's Actually There

The “Religious” classification in the USTC covers an enormous range:

• Biblical commentary — Interpretations of scripture that shaped how Europeans understood their world
• Reformation polemics — The debate that split Europe, in the words of the participants
• Moral theology — Practical ethics for everyday life, from business to family
• Mystical texts — Accounts of religious experience that influenced literature and psychology
• Church history — Primary sources for understanding institutions
• Liturgy and devotion — Texts that structured daily life for millions
• Sermons — The main form of public discourse for most Europeans

Much of this material is directly relevant to historians—of ideas, institutions, culture, gender, economics. You cannot understand early modern Europe without understanding its religious thought.

The Top Authors

The most-published Latin theological authors reveal the diversity of the field:

This list includes Church Fathers, medieval scholastics, Renaissance humanists, Protestant reformers, and Counter-Reformation Jesuits. It's the intellectual history of Western Christianity—and most of it remains untranslated.

The Translation Gap

Paradoxically, theology may be less translated than other fields, despite its cultural centrality. Why?

• Secularization — Modern academia has moved away from confessional interests
• Specialization — Theologians read Latin; why translate?
• Volume — 114,000 works is overwhelming
• Controversy — Some texts are polemical, uncomfortable for modern readers

The result is that major figures remain inaccessible. Jeremias Drexel wrote 256 editions' worth of devotional literature that shaped Catholic piety for a century. How much is in English? Almost nothing. Denis the Carthusian produced 304 editions of mystical and exegetical works. English translations? A handful.

Why It Matters

You cannot understand:

• The Reformation without reading the actual debates in Latin
• Early modern politics without the religious controversies that drove wars and alliances
• Western philosophy without its theological foundations
• Literature without the devotional and homiletic traditions that shaped it
• Science without the natural theology that motivated inquiry

The separation of “religious” from “secular” intellectual history is a modern imposition. For early modern Europeans, theology was the queen of the sciences—the framework within which all other knowledge made sense.

Our Approach

We've chosen to foreground philosophy, natural philosophy, and medicine because these fields have obvious relevance to modern readers. They don't require explaining why they matter.

Theology requires context. It requires overcoming prejudices. It requires explaining that “scholastic” doesn't mean “useless” and that religious debates were often proxies for questions we still care about: What is the good life? How should society be organized? What do we owe each other?

We're not ignoring the 114,000 religious works. We're building an audience that can appreciate them.

What Needs Translation

If we were to prioritize theological translation, we might start with:

• Reformation controversies — The actual texts of the debates, not summaries
• Devotional bestsellers — Works like Drexel's that shaped popular piety
• Mystical texts — Accounts of religious experience with psychological depth
• Moral theology — Practical ethics that reveal social history
• Biblical commentaries — How scripture was actually interpreted

The theological corpus is not a burden. It's an opportunity—once we learn to see it clearly.