Editor’s Note: Matthew Chicoine interviewed D.P. Curtin, founder of The Scriptorium Project , via email in October 2025. Some of the questions/answers have been rearranged, edited, and paraphrased to provide the best reader experience without losing any integrity of the answers given.
The Scriptorium Project seeks to make rare texts from Christian antiquity accessible for the first time in English. What inspired you to begin this work, and why is it important for the Church today?
In short: a really bad orientation group in college. My first day at Villanova involved an overly perky student orientation leader. After one too many fun facts and ice-breakers, I asked to use the bathroom. I never came back. Instead, I went to the library, where by chance I discovered the catalogue of the Jesuit Father Jacques Migne. That would prove to be providential. For the unfamiliar, Fr. Migne compiled many significant works of the Greek and Latin church into large books called “Patrologias” during the 19th century. They were massive works, but they obviously struggle with being relevant now as the use of Greek and Latin has fallen out of favor.
When I discovered them at Villanova, they were in bad shape. Many of the works of the Scriptorium Project are drawn from Migne’s collected texts. In terms of their importance to the modern church, you might say that the Scriptorium Project is a primary source movement. Rather than relying on commentary or later works about saints and church councils, these are the original texts themselves, laid bare in English so that everyone has access to them.
You’ve translated over seven hundred texts from a wide range of traditions—Celtic, Ethiopian, Syriac, even Punic. What has surprised you the most in encountering the voices of the early and medieval Church across so many cultures?
I think in the last century most academic theological circles have attempted to lay the claim that there was no “Christianity”, but a variety of “Christianities”. This claim usually goes that there was a vast array of doctrinal positions held by Christians of different regions in the early church. In other words, there was no “orthodox” position, and those who say otherwise are imposing an anachronism on the history of Christianity.
After an extensive survey of these church documents, I can safely say that this claim is absolutely ludicrous. Ethnic churches with little to no contact with each other over centuries, with vastly different political schemas and church structures, maintained extraordinarily similar themes and teachings. Places as widely spaced as India, Ethiopia, Armenia, and Arabia, far outside of the jurisdiction of Rome or Constantinople, all held positions that we would easily recognize as orthodox Christian teachings.
There are variants in terms of how the church operated, its specific rites, writings, and its calendar – all apparently impacted by the culture. However, what we find spelled out at Nicaea in 325 AD many areas – the function of the church, the divinity of Christ, the sacraments, the centrality of the Scriptures, the resurrection of the dead, and Christ’s pending return – are all found across time and space in different churches. The “Catholic” nature of the church is incredibly apparent when we explore these regions and their respective churches.
Translating isn’t just about words—it’s about conveying meaning, tone, and even the spirit of the text. How do you balance fidelity to the original with readability for a modern audience?
Well, that’s a thesis question in and of itself. There’s quite a bit to unpack here, so I’ll focus on a few points, starting with the idea of “the original”. Many of these texts lack original copies, particularly if they are old or if they were written in another language before. When scribes copied a text, sometimes small things got changed. Usually nothing of significance, even single words, but just enough to agitate scholars. As a result, sometimes we have different versions of the same text. For example, with the Synod of Alexandria under St. Athanasius, we have a Greek and a Latin copy of the text, which say similar things, but not identical things. You can imagine that this is very frustrating. For something like that we have little choice; we can only translate and publish both versions as there’s no way to reconcile both works.
There are other hazards. The biggest issue for these kinds of texts is the use of idioms from the classical Greek world. Some of these idioms survive in our own language, like “deus ex machina” (ἀπὸ μηχανῆς Θεός). We all know what these mean as part of our cultural conditioning: their allegorical phrasing is familiar as either parts of speech or as common proverbs. But other idioms are culturally specific, and their meanings do not necessarily appear obvious. As another example, the Latin idiom laterem lavare means something like “washing bricks” if translated literally. Its idiomatic meaning is “to labor in vain, or to waste time”, as it was assumed that washing bricks is pointless. Idioms are potential landmines when it comes to preserving the integrity of the text, as it usually requires finding a cultural equivalent, if that even exists.
This is also complicated by the fact that these languages are in flux. In the case of something like Latin, this is particularly pertinent. While Latin is regarded as a dead language, there is no death certificate. Its common use probably ceased around the time of Charlemagne, but it continued as the language of the church and state. Consequently, there are intrusions into medieval Latin from Germanic languages, which affects both its grammatical styles and word choices. I could go on about this, but it is headache-inducing.
In terms of making these texts accessible for a modern audience, this sometimes requires some artistry. Punctuation was only being developed during the Dark Ages, so this is commonly a barrier to readability for a modern audience. Just the same, the High Medieval Ages was really the golden age of run-on sentences. St. Albert the Great was particularly bad. He could write up a whole page that he only qualified as a single sentence. In this case, you’re right: it is more than just the switch from Latin to English; it requires clarifying meaning without changing the meaning of the words. I don’t know if I can provide a single way that this is handled, as it depends heavily upon the text and author. In the case of St. Albert, sometimes this involves introjecting words or altering word order to make the sentence comprehensible to our modern ears.
Many Catholics may feel intimidated by patristic or medieval writings. What advice would you give someone opening one of these texts for the first time?
It certainly can be. The “tradition” of Catholicism is not a single book or author, but this vast library, which seemingly feels endless. I think someone approaching this for the first time should do two things. Firstly, there are a few works or authors that are very important, that every Catholic should at least have a passing familiarity with: people like Tertullian, Origen, St. Ignatius, St. Irenaeus and Justin Martyr.
This level of understanding does not need to be scholarly, just a cursory knowledge of who these people were and what they spoke about. After that, if someone wanted to go deeper, I would recommend looking at specific groups of writers. I know that some people have an interest in the church as it developed in their own ethnic background. In the case of my own Irish background, so much of Irish history is immersed in the arrival of the church, its decisions, and the scaffolding it provided (and provides) for the habit of civilization.
Your work has deep roots in your own academic journey, from Villanova to your doctoral research. How has this scholarly path also shaped your personal faith?
This is true. I don’t know how common an academic path it is to move from religion to psychology. Certainly, Carl Rogers attended Union Theological Seminary at one time, and Carl Jung was the son of Swiss Reformed Minister, but they are usually the exception rather than the rule. With psychology, I think I assumed that academic hubris which is very common in university settings. That is to say, I assumed that more was known about human nature via scientific inquiry then what we truly currently comprehend. I don’t want to be too pessimistic here.
Scientific positivism is a tremendous tool that can and should be employed for gaining knowledge about our world, but it also requires the acknowledgement of certain limitations, namely those things which are outside of the purview of objective analysis. Psychology has given us insight into our patterns of communication, personality types, and interactions styles, but questions of our purpose in the world, sin, God, charity, the mystery of good and evil, and a consistent moral anthropology are all beyond its limits. There have been attempts to bridge this gap through what is known as existential psychotherapy, but a purely secular reading of this falls flat. So to answer your question, I think my scholarly interest has brought me full circle, from Theology to Psychology, and again back to Theology.
If you could choose one text from your collection that every Catholic today should read, which would it be—and why?
Personally I’m partial to the “Life of St. Mary of Egypt” by St. Sophronius and “On the Happy Life” by St. Augustine. I think it’s easy for intellectuals to get heavily immersed in the deep theological and moral themes that can be found in some texts, and perhaps miss the forest for the trees. In the case of St. Mary, as with most saints, all the dry theological categories are collapsed into a clear and present moral example. While they are quite useful, we don’t need Aquinas or St. Dionysius, or any of the great doctors, as much as we need people to model the clear presence of Christ in the world.
In a similar vein, St. Augustine offers some really great, albeit brief, advice about pursuing happiness. Again, nothing convoluted that would require a seminary degree to understand, just a clear directive on how to find happiness by looking for truth.
Looking ahead, what’s next for The Scriptorium Project? Are there particular manuscripts or traditions you’re excited to bring into English for the first time?
I’d love to be able to dig in deeper with texts outside of the Latinosphere, but this is an expensive venture as it requires contractors who can sift through these texts. However, in 2026, we may direct our attention to long-neglected works from Ethiopia. There’s some really exciting stuff coming out of Polish universities about the (now defunct) Nubian church. I would like to be able to offer something comparable with our Ethiopian selections, which haven’t been touched by Western scholars. Ethiopia remains largely unknown to most Christians, who commonly forget (or never learned) the depth of its antiquity and how it developed differently from the rest of Christianity.
Another item on the docket is the vast library of texts in Syriac. You might say it was the language of early Christianity, as it was spoken by Christ and the apostles. The biggest challenge is finding people willing to work on these texts, as Syriac, while still spoken, is extremely rare and heavily fragmented. But such is the goal of the Scriptorium Project: to bridge the gaps of eras and regions and thereby make these works accessible to all.
About DP Curtin
D.P. Curtin is an Irish-American psychologist, antiquarian and translator. He grew up with six siblings in Richboro, PA., attended a Catholic parochial school in Southampton, and later Archbishop Wood
High School in Warminster, PA. He obtained his BA from Villanova University in 2007 in Theological Studies, a Masters degree from Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, PA in 2014, and a doctoral degree from Chatham University in Pittsburgh, PA in 2024. He is also involved with the 3rd Order of the Order of St. Augustine through Villanova University.
