Using Medieval Latin: A Toolbox of Resources
by Carol D. Lanham

[updated 17 June 1999]

Supplement: Some Computer-based Resources

It may seem paradoxical to some, but classicists were pioneers in this field—and they thought big. In 1972, long before the Internet burst on the scene, the Thesaurus linguae graecae [TLG] <http://www.uci.edu:80/~tlg>, a mammoth and still growing full-text database that now contains some 75 million words of Greek texts from Homer to 1453, was conceived at UC Irvine and directed until his recent retirement by Theodore F. Brunner. Perseus <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/> offers a wonderful multimedia environment for exploring classical Greek culture. Perseus began to take shape in 1987 and, guided by Geoffrey Crane, grows steadily more sophisticated; it is now adding Latin and resources to support them (see Lewis and Short, Allen and Greenough).

Projects like the TLG and Perseus require large grants and phalanxes of workers. The astonishing growth of the Internet now encourages us to think of individuals as an equally rich computer-based resource—teachers and students online in discussion groups, exchanging information, asking questions, firing back answers or suggestions; scholars posting texts, images, book reviews, course syllabi, entire sites, on the Net. We have stepped (tumbled?) into an exciting future, and right now, energy and imagination seem the only limits to what this new synergy of electronic and human resources can accomplish.

1. Internet

Where to begin? and where to stop? I could well have stopped with Electronic Resources for Classicists and Labyrinth, and even then there would be some overlaps. Each of these sites offers a cornucopia of interesting links—and endless temptations to browse.

Argos. <http://argos.evansville.edu/>

Argos is a “limited area search engine” designed to cover solely the ancient and medieval worlds. It comprises a number of hyperlinked scholarly “associate sites,” such as Perseus and Labyrinth, and works by searching each of those sites plus the pages they in turn are linked to. Therefore, if you search “Plato” (to use its example), Argos will return only items relating to the fifth-century Greek philosopher.

The Classics Page. <http://patriot.net/~lillard/cp/>

The homepage offers an ample and intelligently selected collection of links. At its center, however, is The Latin Library, an expanding collection of online Latin texts, all keyboarded by volunteers, that range as late as Francis Bacon. Be sure to read About These Texts and Quid Novi, the latter a monthly list of texts added to the Library.

Electronic Resources for Classicists: The Second Generation. <http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~tlg/index/resources.html>

A dazzling, well-designed site, created and expertly managed for several years by Maria Pantelia (now the director of the TLG at UC Irvine).

James J. O’Donnell’s Home Page. <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/>

Any such compilation should pay homage to Jim O’Donnell, professor of classical studies and currently vice provost for information systems and computing at the University of Pennsylvania. As an enthusiastic “early adopter” of computer technology for scholarly and teaching purposes, he has been putting it to use online with imagination and wit.

Labyrinth: An Electronic Network for Medievalists. <http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html>

The Labyrinth’s resources include bibliographies, a library of Latin and vernacular texts, manuscript illuminations, course syllabi, book reviews, conference announcements, online manuscript catalogs, links to many related sources, and a good deal more. Check “What’s New” for month-by-month additions.

Library of Congress Resources for Greek and Latin Classics. <http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/classics/clastexts.html>

Descriptive index of online Greek and Latin text collections, including biblical and theological texts; pages devoted to individual authors and works; some texts available by gopher; and a vast collection of links. For information about Greek and Latin resources held by the Library of Congress itself, see <http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/classics/classics.html>.

The searchability of a full-text database vastly facilitates identification of quotations, the systematic study of terms and concepts, and stylistic analysis either synchronic or diachronic. Suppose, for instance, that you want to test the hypothesis that the newly discovered work X is by author N because it uses a certain unusual adjective + noun combination that author N is known to use elsewhere. But a CETEDOC CD-ROM (let’s say) reveals 11 scattered occurrences of this supposedly rare phrase and that its use in the present text is an unacknowledged borrowing from a much earlier, known author! So, even though these full-text databases lack the allure of a well-designed Web site, they will remain an extremely valuable resource. Note that to tap their full value, you must be willing to spend serious time learning how to use the search engine’s capabilities to the fullest—it is no easy task.

In general, these CD-ROMs are much too expensive for individuals to buy, and some may be found only at major research libraries.

Brepols Electronic Publishing <http://www.brepols.com/publishers/pubcdrom.htm>

Brepols Publishers, a distinguished 200-year-old Belgian firm that publishes and distributes across all areas of ancient and medieval studies, moved early into electronic publishing. They now offer a library’s worth of important titles on CD-ROM (some produced in collaboration with scholarly societies), all outfitted with powerful search capabilities. Information is drawn from product flyers and occasional newsletters issued by Brepols.

1. Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts (CLCLT). CLCLT-3, 1996; next release scheduled for 1999.

When complete, will contain all texts published in the Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina and Continuatio Mediaevalis series, plus selected texts, not yet published in these two series, to be taken from the Patrologia Latina until new editions replace them. Now available are the complete works of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, and many others, and the text of the Vulgate and the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament.

2. Cetedoc Index of Latin Forms (CILF). CILF-1 was due fall 1998.

A powerful tool for lexicographical research, hard to describe and not easy to use. The initial release contains nearly 70 million forms—not words but “the different actual occurrences of a lexical entry,” including variant spellings—from antiquity to the present. Some of its features: “Within the limits of the texts incorporated in the database [not fully specified, they presumably include all of those produced electronically by Brepols], scholars get information on the first occurrence of a form, all the works in which it appears, the authors who use it, its frequency of occurrence throughout the centuries, and so forth.”

3. Archive of Celtic-Latin Literature. First release, 1995; second release was planned for 1998.

“A full-text database of the corpus of Latin literature produced in Celtic-speaking Europe, together with the Latin works of the continental ‘peregrini,’ from the period 400–1200 A.D.” Uses the database assembled by the Royal Irish Academy for its dictionary of medieval Latin from Celtic sources. ACLL-2 will contain about 5 million words (May 1998 Newsletter).

4. Electronic Monumenta Germaniae Historica (eMGH-1). First release 1996.

eMGH-1 (1996) comprises a miscellany of texts; eMGH-2 (announced for early 1999) “will include all texts from the Auctores antiquissimi and the Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum besides the texts already available on eMGH-1” (May 1998 Newsletter). You can find the itemized contents of eMGH-1 online at <www.mgh.de/emgh>, and the complete MGH catalog (“Gesamtverzeichnis der Veröffentlichungen”), useful as a sort of site map of the MGH’s many series, at <http://www.mgh.de/gesamtverzeichnis/>.

5. In Principio: Incipit Index of Latin Texts. Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes and Hill Monastic Manuscript Library.

The IRHT transferred from card files to microfiches to CD-ROMs its vast files of descriptive bibliography on Latin texts from earliest times to the Renaissance. The data, to which many scholars had contributed since 1937, include identifications of authors, texts, and manuscripts, incipits and explicits, and secondary bibliography. Starting in 1965, the HMML gathered the same kinds of information while microfilming thousands of manuscripts in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, and its collection complements that of the IRHT. In Principio 6 (1999) contains nearly 750,000 incipits. Good background information at HMML’s Web site, <http://www.csbsju.edu/hmml/incipit/inprin.html>.

6. Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina (BTL). BTL-1 due spring 1999; two subsequent updates planned.

BTL-1 will contain the complete texts of critical editions of Latin texts from the earliest authors up to about 500 A.D., some 200 authors and 500 works in all. When complete, the BTL will include all Teubner editions of Latin texts, even nineteenth-century ones that have not been replaced by new editions, such as Keil’s 8-volume Grammatici Latini.

The German firm of Teubner, founded in 1812, has been publishing its Bibliotheca Teubneriana of Greek and Latin authors for 150 years; it also publishes the Thesaurus linguae latinae. The University of Michigan Press recently became its U.S. distributor.

Latin CD-ROM, v5.3. Packard Humanities Institute.

Contains “nearly all classical Latin literary texts through A.D. 200, together with a few later texts (Servius, Porphyry, Zeno, Justinian) … [and] several versions of the Bible: the Septuagint, Hebrew Bible, Coptic New Testament, Latin Vulgate Bible, King James and RSV Bibles” (flyer from PHI). Texts are searchable by software programs such as Pandora. The CD-ROM is not sold but licensed, currently $50 for one year or $125 for three years. At present, the Institute has no plans to expand the database.

Patrologia Latina Database. Chadwyck-Healey Inc. <http://pld.chadwyck.co.uk/>

Contains all 221 volumes (217 + 4 supplements), fully searchable; check the publisher’s Web site for a description. Remember that for pre-eighth century authors you may still need to check attributions in Clavis Patrum Latinorum.

3. Internet Discussion Groups

The Thesaurus linguae graecae [TLG] site offers a descriptive list of 62 discussion groups devoted to various aspects of classical studies, as well as a link to a Web-searchable archive of a number of those lists. It also supplies general information on how to subscribe, unsubscribe, and send messages to a discussion group. <http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~tlg/index/listservs.html>

New at the Atrium site is the Bibliotheca, an even longer list of discussion groups and newsgroups; like the TLG’s list, it includes each group’s official description of itself, but it also offers evaluative comments and a clue about how much traffic the group generates. <http://web.idirect.com/~atrium/bibliotheca/discussion.html>

The Labyrinth has a link to a list of medieval academic discussion groups and related academic discussion groups, but I suspect that it is not being kept up to date. <http://www.towson.edu/~duncan/acalists.html>