The Church Fathers, as well as the classical writers, played a very important role in that wide recovery and renewal programme of the culture, typical of the Humanism. The translations from the Greek done between XIVth and XVIth Century were the most important resource in the promotion of knowledge of Patristic literature in the West. Translations of Church Fathers are a very central topic in current research on Humanist and Renaissance culture, and they have attracted growing interest. However, up to now, no adequate tools have been available for scholars active in this field.

    The RETRAPA Project (Repertorium Translationum Patrum Graecorum - XIVth-XVIIth Centuries) focuses on this field, by creating an open access online database. RETRAPA will make a census of the tradition of Latin translations from Greek patristic texts; the archive will be set up with specific entries for manuscripts and printed editions. The project will focus on translations of Greek patristic texts up to the eighth century; translations included will range between Petrarch (end of Fourteenth Cent.) to the conventionally fixed date of 1536.

    The RETRAPA database aims (1) to increase our knowledge of the reception of Greek Church Fathers in the Humanism (with new substantial information on the reception of these texts in the Fifteenth Century in terms of printed editions and the circulation of MS sources), and (2) to shed new light on their influence in the emergence of the new European culture.