Shami Ghosh, June 2010
This page
is intended to provide a very brief overview of (printed) resources, especially
dictionaries, intended for those who wish (or are forced) to read Medieval
Latin. As a trained philologist-turned-historian who works with ten or more
languages, I have a strong belief that a concern for words and meanings is an
essential quality for any serious scholar whose primary sources are texts; this
translates, in my case, into a (sometimes obsessive) search for the right
dictionary. I must stress that each dictionary has its own strengths and
weaknesses; it is imperative to be aware of them in order to get the most out
of the dictionaries. Do not rely on just one; and do not let impatience get the
better of you! This last remark is, in a sense, the key to any work with a
language such as Latin: if you are patient and search (and think) long enough,
you’ll figure it out – but give yourself the time, and make the effort to
locate and use the right resources.
In order to
make this page more user-friendly, I have not provided a list as such, but
rather a small bibliographic essay, so that readers will have some idea of what
the works I mention provide. All titles are in bold type so that those
interested solely in bibliographic references may find them more easily. This
guide is based partly on my own experience, and also relies very heavily on Mantello and Rigg’s introduction
to Medieval Latin (see below); all those willing to pick up a fat book would be
well advised to consult (and if in the Medieval Latin business for the long
run, acquire) that tome immediately. I have confined myself largely to works
published in English, but anyone wishing to engage seriously with the study of
Medieval Latin will find that a knowledge of French
and German is absolutely necessary.
You will
also find a list of resources (including some not mentioned below), as well as
links to some very useful pdf files offering a range
of aids for grammar and vocabulary on Andrew Hicks’s website; he also provides, for those of you who
find grammatical and linguistic terms intimidating, the guide
prepared for CMS students
by A. G. Rigg, and, elsewhere on his pages, tutorials
and exercises that will be useful for brushing up your Medieval Latin skills. Further
pedagogical aids can be found here.
Although
Medieval Latin was in many ways different from Classical Latin, it remained,
always, based on the latter, and reference tools for Medieval Latin normally
cover only the divergences from classical usage; you will therefore also
need a good reference grammar for Classical Latin. There are many of these; I
have used Anne Mahoney (ed.), Allen and Greenough's
New Latin Grammar (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2001), generally referred to
as Allen and Greenough; and Benjamin
Hall Kennedy, The Revised Latin Primer, revised by James Mountford (London: Longman, 1962); both are
comprehensive and will serve you well beyond the beginner stage. By no means
should you restrict yourself to textbooks such as Wheelock;
these rarely (if ever) provide a proper reference grammar, which is what you
will need. Allen and Greenough is also
available online at Perseus.
For an
excellent overview of the peculiarities (and I use this word in all its
connotations) of Medieval Latin, see F. A. C. Mantello
and A. G. Rigg (eds), Medieval
Latin. An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1996). This has chapters on a very
wide range of varieties of Medieval Latin, from the language of canon law,
through beast epic and fable to medicine and astrology (including a number of
less predictable topics such as mills, animal husbandry and mining). The
chapters are written by experts in the respective fields, and provide overviews
of the idiosyncrasies of the language in each area of use, as well as a
bibliographical guide. Section B (pp. 21-67) provides a bibliographical
introduction to the myriad reference tools, including dictionaries and indices;
section C provides an excellent and indispensable introduction to Medieval Latin
philology, with subsections on orthography and pronunciation (CB); morphology
and syntax (CC); vocabulary, word formation and lexicography (CD); metrics
(CE); prose styles and cursus (CF); Latin and
the vernaculars (CG); and humanistic Latin (CH). For those just beginning to
read Medieval Latin, CA-CC are, I believe, essential: medieval writers and
their scribes often had very strange orthography, and the rules of syntax (and
grammar altogether) could be applied in rather different ways from what you
might be used to from reading Cicero and Caesar. It’s especially important to
read, re-read, and if possible memorise the most common orthographic variants
introduced in the middle ages: a common problem for beginners is that words
they need to look up are not in any dictionaries, but if you know the common
substitutions that take place, you’ll be able to find most things. Be warned
that you may find one author using one word in different spellings in the same
work, even in the same sentence. Be warned also that authors and scribes were
often not consistent even in their divergences from the classical norm;
do not get lulled into a false sense of security, believing that you have
figured out the pattern of how your text uses medievalisms,
because it will shock you by being ‘correct’ when you least expect it. Also be
warned that medieval scribes and authors were not always ignorant of what
mistakes they and their peers commonly made, and often ‘corrected’ mistakes
where there were none to correct. Thus the common substitution of classical ae by e is matched by the (also common)
substitution of a correct e by a ‘corrected’ ae!
Another
good (though less comprehensive) introduction to Medieval Latin orthography and
grammar is provided by Alison Goddard Elliott, ‘A Brief Introduction to
Medieval Latin Grammar’, in Medieval Latin, ed. by K. P. Harrington, 2nd
edition revised by Joseph Pucci (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 1-51. If you read French, there is a recent
and quite comprehensive guide: Pascale Bourgain, with Marie-Clotilde
Hubert, Le Latin Médiéval, L'Atelier
du Médiéviste, 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).
Apart from a detailed historical introduction to the language, this book
provides plenty of material on differing types of Latin in the middle ages, and
an extensive, heavily annotated anthology of a very diverse body of texts. The
notes and introductions to sections of the anthology are very useful even for
purely linguistic purposes, and provide aids on how to interpret various
aspects of style (verse and prose, and not solely literary); Bourgain, unlike Harrington, also covers
documentary materials and their peculiarities.
Both the
section on Latin philology in Mantello and Rigg, and Elliott, are excellent places to start
as you begin to read Medieval Latin; in my view you really ought to consult at
least one of them to give you some idea of what to expect, and aid you in
figuring out what to look up in dictionaries and grammars. The following works
provide more detailed linguistic guides to Medieval Latin: Albert Blaise, A Handbook of Christian Latin: Style,
Morphology, and Syntax, trans. by G. C. Roti (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992)
[originally Manuel du latin
chrétien (1955)]; and Karl Strecker, Introduction to Medieval Latin, trans. by
R. B. Palmer (Berlin: Weidmann, 1957) [originally Einführung in das Mittellatein (3rd edn
1939)]. These are probably not the best places to start for beginners, but
will be useful as you delve deeper into the language. The caveat is that
Medieval Latin is far more diverse in its usages than Classical Latin, and no
single book can possibly cover anything more than a fraction of the intricacies
of the language: you are best advised to consult works focussing on your
chronological and/or geographical area of interest. You should also be aware of
various specialised works on many fields of Latin, ample references to which
are provided in Mantello and Rigg, and of studies on the particular author(s) or
text(s) you are working on. There are quite a few linguistic studies (albeit
not as many as one would wish) of many of the major medieval authors, and when
in doubt about the interpretation of any text for which such a work exists,
consult it (even if it’s a hundred years old – whatever their faults, the
scholars of that generation tend to know their Latin), rather than relying
solely on standard dictionaries and grammars. If no such study exists, read the
introduction to your edition. This is something we all know we probably ought
to do, but most often don’t. Introductions are not always useful, but good
editions of texts in which the language is unusual or excessively difficult
generally do contain at least a brief outline of the salient linguistic
features of the text; and if the edition is good, the editor probably knows the
language of the text better than anyone else.
The
standard one-volume dictionary for Classical Latin is the OLD = P.
W. G. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1982). However, it is a strictly classical dictionary, not
going beyond the 2nd century, and thus excluding most of the corpus
of patristic Latin from its definitions. Medieval Latin was profoundly
influenced by the Vulgate and by the Church fathers, so while the OLD
is, of course, very useful, for medievalists, Lewis and Short is
probably better: Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (eds),
A New Latin Dictionary founded on the Translation of Freund's Latin-German
Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879). This was originally a Latin-German
dictionary, translated into English by Andrews, and revised by Lewis and Short;
it’s been reprinted many times, and is still in print (later imprints omit the
‘new’ from the title, leaving simply ‘A Latin Dictionary’). Perhaps worse
organised than the OLD, it is nevertheless useful for the
medievalist because it includes in its compass Late Latin, thus incorporating
many definitions based on patristic texts and the Vulgate. A new copy is very
expensive, but I got mine second-hand for $70 (Canadian), including shipping,
so keep an eye open on abebooks: this is an
invaluable investment. If you’re not so lucky, get hold of Charlton T. Lewis
(ed.), An Elementary Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891).
This is essentially an abridgement of Lewis and Short, and also still in
print; it’s affordable and portable, and in my view it’s infinitely better than
other portable dictionaries such as Collins or Cassell’s,
even if Lewis’s definitions are less accessible for the modern reader. Be
warned that the first definition is not by any means necessary or likely to be
the most common one! Lewis and Short lists the etymological definition
first, and thus the first definition is frequently the least common usage. But
if you are patient and have reasonably good eyesight, you should find what you
are looking for. Lewis and Short can be consulted online at Perseus.
Medieval
Latin expands greatly, perhaps especially after about 600, and there is no
single dictionary that can work for all of it. Lewis and Short, while
useful for Late Latin, is not good enough even for that, and when dealing with
later texts, especially with technical material (including theology, jurisprudence,
charters, wills, etc.), you will need to work with what might come to be a
bewildering variety of dictionaries. As you work your way into your subject,
you’ll figure out what’s best for you; I provide, below, some useful places to
start. A word of caution: all dictionaries for Medieval Latin that I know
provide, primarily, the medieval meanings of the words they define.
These meanings rarely, if ever, supersede completely the classical meanings.
Moreover, many dictionaries of Medieval Latin do not even list words that are
glossed adequately (for the purposes of medievalists) in the standard classical
dictionaries (though which one is the standard varies depending on the language
of the lexicographer of the dictionary you use!). Thus a similar situation
obtains as with grammars: you will always need to use a classical
dictionary in conjunction with one based on medieval texts. In addition to the
dictionaries listed below, many repositories of sources (such as the MGH
series of diplomata; the MGH volumes may be viewed
and searched online at www.dmgh.de) contain glosses
for their texts; these might not always be entirely accurate or up-to-date, but
in many cases they have the merit of being written by real experts whose
knowledge of the texts and command of Latin was often quite exceptional, and
should always be consulted: do not scorn older scholarship when working with
languages! A further caveat: be very attentive to the context (period, place,
and use) of the text you are reading, and the context of the definition in the
dictionary you use. This is, of course, not always possible with all
dictionaries; but words change or take on new meanings, sometimes drastically
different from what you will find in the first dictionary you consult, or under
the first definition of the word. A definition valid for Late Latin, based on a
text from
The
standard dictionary of Medieval Latin (insofar as there can be a standard) is J.
F. Niermeyer and C. van de Kieft
(eds), Mediae Latinatis lexicon minus, revised edition by J. W. J
Burgers, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill,
2002); this should generally be your first port of call for anything not
satisfactorily explained in Lewis and Short (and Niermeyer
sometimes provides better definitions, for medievalists, even of words
apparently satisfactorily explained in Lewis and Short). This is based
on Niermeyer’s reading of a wide variety of texts
related to legal and economic history, and is thus an excellent dictionary for
an historian; it has been expanded in the revised edition by the inclusion of a
larger range of literary, theological and philosophical texts. The definitions
are in French, English, and German. Its chronological range is roughly from 500
to 1200. Niermeyer is very useful especially
because it provides examples, and some times a large number of them, in almost
every definition; the editors also take pains to try and list the first
attested use of a word in any particular sense (though this should be used only
as a rough guide for dates of particular usages, not as absolute fact). Though
it costs approximately $500 (Canadian), second-hand and remaindered copies can
sometimes be found for half that price or less, and this is definitely a
worthwhile investment for a dedicated medievalist. Another useful dictionary
covering the period between around 600 and around 1500 is Albert Blaise, Lexicon Latinatis medii aevi praesertim
ad res ecclesiasticas pertinens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975). Unlike Niermeyer,
this is, as the title indicates, less relevant if you’re working on economic or
social history, but is useful for literary works, theology and philosophy. Blaise’s definitions are in French; he also provides far
less extensive citations than Niermeyer, but
his dictionary is considerably cheaper (though still expensive). The most
comprehensive dictionary for Medieval and Humanist Latin is Charles du Fresne, sieur
du Cange, Glossarium mediæ et infimæ Latinatis (known
to friends and enemies alike as Du Cange), originally published in the seventeenth century
and not seriously updated since. The definitions are in Latin; it is in ten
volumes and unwieldy. But when you are working on obscure topics, dealing with
wills and charters that list household articles or agricultural tools, you will
often find Du Cange
is very helpful. It’s also useful because it lists a lot of vocabulary that is
in the grey area between vernacular Romance and Latin. Du
Cange is available online (in scanned image files)
here and here,
and as a fully searchable tool (with a French interface) here.
For the
much smaller chronological scope of Late Latin, the standard works are Albert
Blaise (ed.), Dictionnaire
latin-français des auteurs chrétiens, revu specialement pour le vocabulaire theéologique par Henri Chirat
(Strasbourg, 1954; current imprint: Turnhout: Brepols, 1967); and Alexander Souter
(ed.), A Glossary of Later Latin to 600. A.D. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1949); the latter provides brief definitions only, no examples. Another
dictionary, handy because of its portability, is E. Habel
and F. Gröbel, Mittellateinisches
Glossar, 2nd edn
(Paderborn: F. Schöningh,
1989). Also useful for Ecclesiastical Latin is Albert Sleumer and Josef Schmidt, Kirchenlateinisches
Wörterbuch, 2nd edn
(Limburg a. d. Lahn: Steffen, 1926; current imprint: Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1996).
In addition
to these, there are various national dictionaries of Medieval Latin, few of
which are complete (and some of which will probably, alas, never be completed);
these cover European regions that are defined according to the medieval
vernaculars. A list is provided in Mantello
and Rigg, pp. 104-5. A ‘very selective’ but
nevertheless fairly large list of specialised lexica is provided in Mantello and Rigg,
pp. 34-6; this includes such fascinating titles as ‘The Latin Vocabulary of
Illicit Sex’; Die lateinischen Schimpfwörter;
Juristenlatein; Parish Register Latin; Index
de la pharmacopée latine;
and the Glossarium eroticum
linguae latinae. Apart
from the Journal of Medieval Latin and the Mittellateinisches
Jahrbuch, both of which do publish articles
relevant to Medieval Latin lexicography (although they tend to concentrate on
other issues), the Archivum Latinatis Medii Aevi (also known as Bulletin Du
Cange) publishes quite a number of contributions
to the subject. For my own field of German social history, Eduard
Brinckmeier, Glossarium
diplomaticum (Aalen: Scientia, 1967 [originally Gotha,
1856-63]) is a useful reference tool for charters, inscriptions, account
books, etc; although it is based on sources from the central and later middle
ages and therefore focuses on the vernacular, many Latin terms are also given,
and examples from the primary sources are provided. Most visitors to this
website will probably be working on medieval
Brepols maintains a Database of Latin
Dictionaries that includes Lewis and Short, Du Cange, and a number of others; if your institution
subscribes, you should be able to access this on campus or by using your password
for online resources—ask a librarian if you’re not sure.
You will
most probably (and quite understandably) not want to immerse yourself too
deeply in the messy and squiggly world of palaeography and diplomatics,
but it’s quite likely that you’ll need to know something about these subjects
at some point in time during your career; and while a knowledge of the
auxiliary disciplines of medieval studies does not necessarily aid you in
understanding Medieval Latin (although it may do so as well), it does often
help you figure out why Medieval Latin is the way it is. The chapters on
‘Ecclesiastical and University Administration’ (DC; pp. 183-94); ‘Secular
Administration’ (DD; pp. 195-229); and ‘Charters, Deeds, and Diplomatics’ (DE; pp. 230-40) in Mantello
and Rigg provide introductory orientations to the
idiosyncrasies of the language of medieval officialdom. Leonard E. Boyle, ‘Diplomatics’, in Medieval Studies. An
Introduction, 2nd edn, ed. by James M. Powell
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992), pp. 82-113, provides a very
useful introduction to the subject, though less focussed on its linguistic
aspects. The authoritative handbook is Harry Bresslau,
Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und
Italien, 2 vols
(Leipzig: Veit, 1912; and Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931); a good, more recent (if less
comprehensive) work is Olivier Guyotjeannin,
Jacques Pycke and Benoît-Michel
Tock, Diplomatique
médiévale, 3rd edn, L'Atelier du Médiéviste,
2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006).
There is nothing comparable in English.
James J.
John, ‘Latin Palaeography’, in Medieval Studies. An Introduction, 2nd edn, ed. by James M. Powell (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 1992), pp. 3-81, provides a brisk and very accessible introduction to the subject. The
standard handbook for Latin palaeography is Bernhard Bischoff, Latin
Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. by Dáibhí
ó Cróinin and David Ganz
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) [originally Paläographie
des römischen Altertums und
des abendländischen Mittelalters,
1986], an invaluable reference tool for anything related to manuscripts
and scripts. Although it is extremely dense, and Bischoff appears to have
expected his reader to have the same sort of access to microfilms, facsimiles,
and manuscripts as he himself did, it’s definitely worth consulting; and you
will almost certainly need to know something about the topics it covers at some
point. An excellent reference work for palaeography (and to some extent diplomatics and codicology) is Leonard
E. Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography. A Bibliographical Introduction,
Toronto Medieval Bibliographies, 8 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984);
a not very heavily annotated bibliography, it lists scholarship as well as
standard reference works such as the various catalogues of medieval and modern
libraries.
Even if not
particularly interested in editing texts, it is actually useful to know
something about the process by which the editions we read are produced. Richard
J. Tarrant, ‘Classical Latin literature’, in Scholarly Editing: A Guide to
Research, ed. by D. C. Greetham (New York: Modern
Language Association of America, 1995), pp. 95-148, provides a good
introduction to the subject, and with a few fairly obvious caveats, the theory
is for the most part as valid (or invalid) for the bulk of the corpus of
Medieval Latin texts as it is for Classical Latin. A good, clear handbook in
English is Martin L. West, Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique
Applicable to Greek and Latin Texts (Stuttgart: Teubner,
1973). Sometimes, awareness of how editions are produced and an eye on the
apparatus can alert you to orthographic and other linguistic idiosyncrasies of
your text(s) and/or manuscript(s); these can occasionally be very revealing.
By now,
having learnt about the language, the scripts, and also the editorial process
by which they reach you, you might want to know something about the history of
Medieval Latin literature. For this vast subject, the best place to start is,
once again, Mantello and Rigg; chapter GA provides an overview and introductory
bibliography, and the following chapters provide introductions and
bibliographical aids to the various genres (including what we might no longer
consider ‘literary’ genres, such as historiography). There is no good, modern,
and English introduction to the whole of Medieval Latin that I know of; but the
bibliography at pp. 531-3 for chapter GA in Mantello
and Rigg lists the standard histories for the
specific regions, and some of the works for different genres. Strecker provides basic orientation in the
form of a guide to texts, studies and editions; his references for the latter
may be outdated by now, but many of the older studies, especially on some of
the less-famous authors, remain standard (for example, Bonnet’s study of the
language of Gregory of Tours). Harrington is a useful anthology of
Medieval Latin texts at various levels of difficulty, with introductory essays
that provide you with a fair amount of the literary-historical context and
guides to further reading, and linguistic notes that are often good aids to
understanding – but be warned that the explanations of linguistic peculiarities
are not always the best. The texts in Harrington are not arranged with any
sort of real coherence in mind, but are good representative samples of the
different periods and milieus of Medieval Latin, and his introductory notes
provide competent if brief overviews of the periods and authors. Bourgain provides a more comprehensive history than
does Harrington, and with a broader range of texts as illustrations;
hers is a rare anthology that includes plenty of documentary material. Her
texts are also chosen to illustrate not just different periods, but also
markedly different styles of writing, and her anthology is a better place to
start for a history of Latin style in the middle ages than is Harrington (of
course, you would need to be comfortable reading French). She also provides far
more of a linguistic history than do other anthologies, without neglecting
literary history. Keith C. Sidwell, Reading
Medieval Latin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), is
another good (albeit expensive) anthology going up to the early thirteenth
century, with useful linguistic and historical notes, and extensive vocabulary
and grammar aids for each of the texts. Unlike Harrington, Sidwell provides texts with thematic coherence in
mind; thus in each section arranged according to period, texts are arranged
according to particular topics (e.g. the Norman conquest; scholastic
philosophy; courtly literature). His introductory notes are good, and provide
not just an introduction to the period, but to the individual topics he’s
selected; and his texts are chosen to provide a coherent representative
introduction to the primary sources for each topic. Thus, for example, those
wishing to deal with the eleventh and twelfth century will find a selection
from the most important texts on the crusades, the investiture conflict, the
Norman conquest, and new developments in theology and philosophy (among other
topics), along with concise but useful overviews of the issues involved; in
each case, the texts and excerpts are put together to make some sort of sense
in terms of content and relation to the larger issues, not just as examples of
Latin. Sidwell also provides a brief glossary
of specifically medieval vocabulary at the end of the book. Bourgain, Harrington and Sidwell
not only provide brief histories of the literature (interpreted broadly,
including philosophy and historiography, and in the case of Bourgain,
administrative and legal texts); they are also good places to go to read Latin
on your own, but with some guidance, while getting a flavour of the many shades
and varieties of Medieval Latin. All have some bibliographic aids to get you
further; Bourgain is most comprehensive in
this regard, followed by Harrington, who takes care to cite any
specifically linguistic studies of his authors that exist.