BREPOLiS - The Library of Latin Texts Online (CLCLT)

CLCLT is the world's leading database for Latin texts. In total, the present version of the Library of Latin Texts contains over 53 million Latin words, drawn from more than 2800 works that are attributed to approximately 860 authors. The texts which are incorporated are selected by virtue of their having been edited according to best contemporary scholarly practice. Independent research is undertaken to verify facts relating to the text, such as the veracity of the authorial attribution or the dating. In addition, errors in word-forms from the printed version are corrected.

The Library of Latin Texts is a project that was started in 1991 as the Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts, hence its common abbreviation ‘CLCLT’. Its purpose was to produce a database comprising the entirety of Christian Latin literature. The new name that was adopted in 2002 refers to the expansion of the chronological limits that were originally set. The aim now is to offer a database that will continue to expand and will comprise not only Latin literature from the patristic and medieval periods but also from Antiquity and the early-modern and modern eras.
The Library of Latin Texts is produced by the Centre ‘Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium’ (CTLO) under the direction of Paul Tombeur. CTLO continues the former activities in the field of Latin studies of Cetedoc. Cetedoc was founded by the Université Catholique de Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve and has been developed jointly by Brepols Publishers and the university.

The first chronological part of the database comprises the entire corpus of Latin literature from Classical Antiquity up to the second century C.E./A.D. It therefore gives access to the opera omnia of Plautus and Terence, of Caesar and Cicero, Virgil, Horace and Ovid, Titius-Livius and the Senecas, the two Plinys, Tacitus and Quintilian and many others.

The second chronological part of the databases comprises the patristic Latin literature that starts around 200 C.E./A.D. with Tertullian and ends with the death of Venerable Bede in 735. It offers the complete works of important patristic writers such as Ambrose, Augustine, Ausonius, Cassian, Cyprian, Gregory the Great, Jerome, Marius Victorinus, Novatian, Paulinus of Nola, Prudentius, Tertullian and many rich corpora of authors such as Cassiodorus, Isidore and the Venerable Bede. It also contains non-Christian literature of that period such as Ammianus Marcellinus, the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Claudian, Macrobius and Martianus Cappella.

The medieval literature in the database comprises Latin literature after 735 and includes a large number of texts up to 1500. This part of the database includes the complete works of many medieval authors such as Anselm of Canterbury, Beatus de Liebana, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, Sedulius Scottus, Thomas à Kempis, Thomas de Celano, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the Rationale of Guilelmus Durandus and important works by Abelard, Bonaventure, Ramon Llull, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham and so forth. The core of this part consists of editions taken from the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis but editions from many other series such as Sources Chrétiennes, the Patrologia Latina and the Acta Sanctorum have also been selected.

This part of the database already contains Neo-Latin texts counting more than one million words and will be significantly expanded in future. It includes, for instance, the decrees from the modern ecumenical Church councils up to Vatican II and translations into Latin of important sixteenth-century works. In the near future important texts relating to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation will become available in the database. At the moment, a selection of works of John Calvin is already searchable.

The database is updated twice a year with new material

Interface in English, French, German and Italian

Possibility to find a text based on a reference

Each work is supplied with "a background on the text"

The powerful search-software enables the users to undertake enhanced search possibilities:

By using wildcards and operators, the user can construct complex search-queries
Filters are used when, instead of searching through the entire data set, one wishes to restrict the search to a particular Author or group of Authors, a particular Work, a particular Series, Collection or Century.

'live link' to the Database of Latin Dictionaries is available for all institutions subscribing to both online databases.


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