First of all, studies carried out within the framework of the BIBLINDEX project, an online index of scriptural quotations in the Early Christian Literature, are gathered. They aim at renewing the historiography on the reception of the Scriptures by statistical analysis. The methodological aspects – identification, expression, delimitation, characterization, queries and visualization – are discussed, then the defined method is applied to several corpora of the first centuries: the works of Irenaeus, Jerome; the book of Qohelet as read by the Fathers. The corpus written by the "last" of them, Bernard of Clairvaux, is the subject of the two following parts: archetypal indeed, due to the richness and the complexity of its implementations of the...