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Library of Latin Texts – Series B: overview of the texts added in 2018

As of December 2018, the Library of Latin Texts – Series B includes 1,064 works, together with 5,084 diplomatic charters. This allows for searches to be made across more than 45.2 million words. Since November 2017, more than 4.5 million words, spread across sixty-eight different works, have been added to the database. Sixty-seven of these works are entirely new, while the sixty-eighth completes Erasmus’ Adagia; from now on, the entire work can be consulted. As a result, the current version of the LLT-B allows scholars to consult 6,868 works and charters. 

The additions included in the 2018 update focus on material from the end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Accordingly, we have continued to incorporate the works of Denis the Carthusian. In this update, we have added two long works by the Carthusian: the first of these is the Enarrationes in Librum Iob, accompanied by an Epilogatio in Librum Iob which consists of a Tractatulus de causa diuersitatis euentuum humanorum. the second new addition is the Commentaria in Psalmos omnes Dauidicos, which is followed by the Tractatulus de modo deuote psallendi. Other exegetical works that have been included are the Enarrationes on the two Books of Chronicles, the two first books of Ezra, the books of Esther, Judith, and Tobias, and on the two first Books of the Maccabees. 

The Observant Franciscan Bernardine of Siena is widely known as one of the most important preachers of the fifteenth century. His popularity – he is referred to as the Apostle of Italy – stems largely from the fact that he preached in Italian, despite initially drafting and consequently reworking his sermons in Latin. In 2018, we included a significant number of Bernardine’s Latin works based on the critical edition published in Quaracchi by the Collegium S. Bonaventurae: key among these are the extensive collections of sermons that make up the Quadragesimale de christiana religioneand the Quadragesimale de Euangelio aeterno. Together, these comprise 131 Lent sermons in which the preacher aims to evangelize and lead the faithful towards a perfect and fruitful Christian life. In addition to these, we have incorporated less extensive collections: the De octo beatitudinibus euangelicis, De beata Virgine, De Spiritu sancto et de inspirationibus, De uita christiana, De diuersis, and De tempore. We have also included the appendices of the reference edition, which also contain old or alternative versions of the text used in the different collections of sermons that were modified or deleted by the author while he was working on the final redaction of the text. These texts provide additional insights into the preacher’s editorial work. 

Another great name also makes his first appearance in the database with the 2018 updates: Jean Charlier de Gerson, better known as Jean Gerson, was a famous mystical theologian who, for 28 years (from 1387 to 1415), was a professor and thereafter also Chancellor of the University of Paris. He also played a leading role in the Council of Constance (1414–1418). As part of this year’s update, we have covered a large part of the author’s opera omnia: these consist of his correspondence, his poetic works, his Latin discourses, his spiritual and pastoral oeuvre, the works that he produced during his career as an academic teacher, and finally, those texts that are of a doctrinal, ecclesiological, pedagogical, or polemic nature. 

The Registers of Innocent III are of prime importance for the study of medieval history. The 2018 updates contain letters relating to the sixth and seventh years of the papacy of Innocent III, covering respectively the years 1203–1204 and 1204–1205. As a reference text, we have chosen the critical edition published by the Österreichisches Kulturinstitut in Rom. 

With regards to scholastic literature, we have continued to add to the works of Henry of Ghent. The most recent update includes the Quodlibet IV. 

Some two years ago, in 2016, we started adding the Latin works of the theologian John Wycliffe, who was to exert a profound influence on the Czech Reformer Jan Hus. The 2018 update includes the De logica, the Logicae continuatio, and the Tractatus tertius of the De logica, all of which were published between 1893 and 1899 by M. H. Dziewicki for the Wyclif Society. 

In 2017, we added the Epistularum libri XLVIII by the Italian humanist Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481), a great defender of Greek culture in the West. For this update, we have also included five translations from Greek, created by Filelfo. Foremost among these is the De Paedia Cyri regis Persarum libri VIII, the translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, dating back to 1467, which was dedicated to Pope Paul II. The other four translations broadly concern Spartan history: these consist of Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaemonians and Agesilaus, together with Plutarch’s biographies of Lycurgus and Numa Pompilius. The latter four texts include prefaces by Filelfo with dedications, written in letter format, to Cardinal Niccolò Albergati; they can be dated to around 1432 or shortly before. 

In recent years, we have added the Latin texts from Eastern Europe to the LLT-B. In 2018, we continued with the selection of two works by Emperor Charles IV, an important figure both in Czech history and more generally for the history of the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor’s autobiography can be considered as “a rare example of a personal memoir by a medieval ruler”. The second work added this year is the Historia noua de sancto Wenceslao martyre, a Vita of Bohemia’s ‘national saint’. Hungarian history is also touched upon in Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hungarorum — the author is a famous thirteenth-century Hungarian chronicler — as well as in the Epistola of Master Roger, a thirteenth-century cleric who was an eye-witness to the Mongol invasion of Hungary. In this letter, Roger laments the destructions caused by this event. 

In 2014, we enriched our database with the first chiliad of Erasmus’ Adagia, the opus magnum of the humanist, which he continued working on until the end of his life. The two 2018 updates include the second, third, and fourth chiliads, as well as those parts of the fifth chiliad that Erasmus managed to finish. Our version of the text follows the edition of Erasmus’ opera omnia (second volume), published by the Swiss theologian Jean Le Clerc in Leiden in 1703. 

Erasmus’ debate with Luther marked an important step in his intellectual evolution. In response to the publication of the famous Ninety-five Theses, Luther was threatened with excommunication by the papal bull Exsurge Domine, promulgated by Leo X. The German reformer justified his position in his Assertio omnium articulorum Martini Lutheri per bullam Leonis X. nouissimam damnatorum. After some hesitation, Erasmus published the De libero arbitrio in 1524, in which he went against Luther by defending man’s liberty before God. This led to the definitive rupture between the two men. We have included the text of the edition published in 1910 (2nd edn in 1935) by J. von Walter. In this year’s update, we have also started to introduce a selection of Luther’s works in the Library of Latin Texts, Series A. 

You can consult a list of new authors and titles of works on the LLT-B’s website. The LLT-B is a complementary resource to the whole of the LLT-A. 

Library of Latin Texts – Series A: overview of the texts added in 2018

Over the course of 2018, 148 new works were added to the Library of Latin Texts – Series A. Of these works, 91 can be attributed to 29 authors who have this year been included in the database for the first time. Four works were made available through the production of a new edition, and one dossier was reorganised and completed. As of November 2018, the LLT-A thus contains an additional 2.22 million words than in 2017. The current version of the LLT-A therefore allows its users to search more than 83 million words across 4,124 texts. 

The most important update concerns the collection of Augustine’s sermons. The texts included under the entry Augustinus Hipponensis – Sermones ad populum correspond to the corpus of those Sermons to the people that are recognised as certainly or very probably authentic, and for which we have obtained all necessary copyright permissions. This selection reflects the status quaestionis as of 2018. To make it easier for users to consult the database, the whole corpus is presented as a single entry. In addition to the sermons from Dom Verbraken’s catalogue, this entry includes different sermons that have hitherto been classified as separate entries, such as those sermons discovered by François Dolbeau in a manuscript held in Mainz. Other texts that have been discovered or identified recently have also been added, in particular the Erfurt Sermons discovered by Isabella Schiller and edited in collaboration with Dorothea Weber and Clemens Weidmann. An exhaustive list of all sermons, containing the necessary bibliographical references, can be accessed at the end of this manual (List of Augustine’s ‘Sermones ad populum’). Note that, as a result of recent research by François Dolbeau, Sermon 360 is now classified under the entry Maximinus Sinitensis episcopus – Sermo gratiarum Maximiani episcopi quod reuersus sit ad catholicam (ecclesiam) ex donatistis (olim: Augustinus Hipponensis, sermo 360). 

For three of Saint Augustine’s work on Arianism, the Contra sermonem Arianorum, the Collatio cum Maximino, and the Contra Maximinum, the new critical edition published by Pierre-Marie Hombert in the Series Latina of the Corpus Christianorum has now replaced the Maurist texts that were encoded for the Thesaurus Augustinianus. We have also included Augustine’s brief prologue to his Contra sermonem Arianorum, the authenticity of which has been established by Clemens Weidmann. 

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the commentary on the Apocalypse written by African author Tyconius in the fourth century. As no extant copy of this text has survived, it was necessary to reconstruct Tyconius’ writings via indirect traditions. The textus reconstructus, published in 2011 by Mgr Roger Gryson, is now included in the database. At the same time, we have also integrated two additional texts edited by Mgr Gryson, both of which make use of Tyconius’ commentary, and which can also contribute, on different levels, to the reconstruction of the lost text. These works are the Fragmenta Taurinensia, which originated in the Augustinian circles of North Africa soon after the death of the bishop of Hippo; and a Glossa in Apocalypsin, which has survived preserved in a Cambridge manuscript and which was probably written between 750 and 900. 

Translations from Greek form an important corpus in Latin literature. As part of our latest update to the database, we have added two works by the Neoplatonic Philosopher Proclus translated by William of Moerbeke: these comprise a commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, and those parts of the commentary on the Timaeus that were translated by William. This dossier is completed by the notes inserted into two manuscripts of the commentary on the Parmenides by Nicholas of Cusa. 

It is also worth mentioning the three Byzantine chronicles that were translated and adapted by Anastasius the Librarian: the Chronographia tripertita, dealing with the Chronographicon syntomon by Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople; the Eclogê chronographias by the monk George Syncellus, and the Chronographia by Theophanes the Confessor. Of equal importance are two works translated by Dionysius Exiguus: Gregory of Nyssa’s De opificio hominis, translated by Dionysius as De creatione hominis; and the Tomus ad Armenios, the Greek original of which dates back to Proclus, archbishop of Constantinople (died in 446). 

The Tituli, edited in 1589 by François Juret according to a now-lost manuscript, are ascribed to Saint Ambrose. These 21 hexametrical distichs are thought to have been explanatory verses for pictorial representations that, according to tradition, were once located in the Basilica of Saint Ambrose in Milan. For the purposes of this current update, we have replaced the old text established by Sebastian Merkle in 1896, which was incorporated into the first volume of the Patrologiae Latinae Supplementum, with the new edition by Francesco Lubian, published in the Lingua Patrum collection. 

In the series Ordines Romani, the first of which was included in the database in the 2017 update, we have added ordines 8 to 11. Ordo XI, of Roman origins, deals with the ritual of baptism; it is considered one of the oldest ordines to have survived. 

The six texts published by Adriaan Gaastra, entitled Paenitentialia Italiae saeculi VIII-XI, complete the corpus of penitentials that is already represented in the database, in particular the Paenitentialia minora Franciae et Italiae and Paenitentialia Hispaniae. All penitentials included in this update, with the exception of the Paenitentiale in duobus libris, were transmitted in single manuscripts. Their editions retain the phonetic and morphological peculiarities that are characteristic for the time of their composition. In the same genre, we have added the Paenitentiale Cantabrigense, written during the tenth century, probably in Canterbury. The edition that we have chosen is the editio princeps of the full text; up to now, only an incomplete version was known, published by Wasserschleben as the Paenitentiale Sangermanense. 

In 1930, Dom G. Morin discovered ‘a substantial part of Gottschalk’s literary production, which was thought to have been lost forever’ (C. Lambot) in the codex Bernensis 584. Fifteen years later, in 1945, Dom C. Lambot published the theological dissertations preserved in this manuscript, along with Gottschalk’s grammatical treatises. We have added to the database the entire collection of texts published by Dom Lambot (17 works), a collection that also contains 26 fragments of short theological works known only from indirect tradition, as well as the Schedula ‘Quod trina deitas dici posset’ transmitted at the beginning of the De una et non trina deitate of Hincmar of Reims. 

Manuscript 24 (A 41), held in the Rouen Municipal Library, contains the famous ‘Double Psalter of St Ouen’. In this manuscript, glosses and commentaries from three clearly distinct sources are juxtaposed alongside the text of the psalter iuxta Hebraeos. We have adopted here the text edited in 2012 by L. De Coninck for the Corpus Christianorum. 

The corpus of Hrabanus Maurus’ works was expanded by the addition of his great commentary on the prophet Ezechiel. 

Aelred, the third abbot of Rievaulx, was a prolific writer. His ascetic works and his sermons have been included in the database for a long time. We have now included the Cistercian’s historical and hagiographical works, of which the first critical edition was published in 2017. Among other texts, they include the Genealogia regum Anglorum, the Relatio de Standardo, the De sanctis ecclesiae Haugustaldensis, and, of course, the Vita sancti Aedwardi regis et confessoris. Note that a verse Life of Saint Edward the Confessor, composed by an unknown author but modelled on Aelred’s Vita, has been added to the database together with Aelred’s text. 

The Historia scholastica by Petrus Comestor was one of the most widespread manuals in the Middle Ages. Based essentially (although not exclusively) on Biblical texts, its author outlines a universal history from the Creation of the world up to the Ascension. Owing to the current lack of a critical edition of the entire work, we have included the complete text of the edition published in 1699 by Emmanuel Navarrus and reprinted in the Patrologia Latina. Furthermore, the work’s sequel, the Historia Actuum Apostolorum, attributed to Peter of Poitiers, Chancellor of the Cathedral School of Paris, has been included in the database. 

As usual, scholastic philosophy is well-represented among the newly included texts. For example, this year we have started adding the Latin works of Meister Eckhart. The current update includes three groups of works, a new critical edition of which was produced by  Loris Sturlese after a previously unknown recension of the text perserved in an Oxford manuscript was discovered in 1985: these consist of the Prologi in Opus tripartitum, the Expositio libri Genesis, and the Liber parabolarum Genesis. 

Texts by Peter Abelard have been available for consultation in the database for a long time. However, for the current update we have added an important corpus of texts relating to logic: most notably, these include the Dialectica (based on the edition published by L. M. De Rijk), as well as multiple works that were published between 1919 and 1933 by B. Geyer in his collection Peter Abaelards philophische Schriften, and those edited by M. Dal Prà in Pietro Abelardo, Scritti di logica. 

We have also added different commentaries on the anonymous Liber de causis and on Proclus’ Elementatio theologica. These commentaries are attributed to authors such as William of Leus, Henry of Geismar, John of Mallinges, John Krosbein, and John Wenck of Herrenberg, or else were transmitted anonymously. The works in question date back to between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and were published by a group of editors working together in a research project at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania), led by Dragos Calma. 

Samuel Presbiter, who taught at Lincoln Cathedral School from the 1180s until shortly before his death in 1213, often used material written by his master, William de Montibus. In this update, we have added to the database the Collecta ex diuersis auditis in schola magistri Willelmi de Monte, published in 2016 by Andrew N. J. Dunnin in the Toronto Medieval Latin Texts collection. 

Two versions exist of the Collationes in Hexaemeron by Saint Bonaventure. The so-called ‘short’ version, edited in 1934 by F. Delorme, has been included in the database for a long time. Now, we have also included the ‘long’ version, which was published in volume V of Bonaventure’s Opera Omnia (Quaracchi, 1891). 

In composing his exegetical works, Andrew of Saint Victor relied on the science of contemporary Jewish theologians. Despite its imperfections, we have chosen to include the text of the Expositio in Ezechielem as published in 1991 by M. A. Signer (who passed away in 2009). 

After Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau (c. 1129–1164) is often considered as the second great figure of twelfth-century female mysticism. Abbot Egbert of Schönau, Elisabeth’s brother, collected, edited, formatted, and reworked her texts. We have included Elisabeth’s works here according to the edition published by F.W.E. Roth in 1884. To this dossier, we have also added Egbert’s works, edited in the same volume, as well as those by Emecho, who succeeded Egbert as abbot and wrote a life of Egbert, among other texts. 

Thanks to an agreement with the Evangelische Verlagsanstalt (Leipzig), we have started to add Martin Luther’s Latin works, which were published in the three-volume Lateinisch-Deutsche Studienausgabe. Works added to the database in 2018 include the De seruo arbitrio from 1525 (Luther’s answer to Erasmus’ De libero arbitrio), the Tractatus de libertate christiana (as well as its covering letter to Leo X), the De captiuitate Babylonica ecclesiae - Praeludium Martini Lutheri, and, of course, the famous Ninety-Five Theses of the Disputatio pro declaratione uirtutis indulgentiarum. We have also included the text of the two papal bulls issued by Leo X that deal with Luther’s excommunication, namely the Exsurge Domine from 1520, and the Bulla ‘Decet Romanum Pontificem’ from 1521. The Contra XXXII articulos Louaniensium theologistarum from 1545, one of Luther’s last works, is accompanied by the original thirty-two articuli that provoked Luther’s wrath; these were written by theologians of the university of Louvain and were authorised by Charles V. Alongside these, we have also included the parallel list of fifty-nine articuli, which were prepared by the Louvain theologians for a more specialised audience. 

You can consult a list of new authors and titles of works on the LLT-A’s website.