The collection of incipits at the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes (Paris, France)
Since its foundation in 1937, the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes had compiled several card files of incipits using a wide range of sources including direct descriptions of manuscripts, library catalogues, collections of texts and specialized bibliography. The oldest, most voluminous and most frequently consulted of these card files covers the whole of Latin literature from its origins to the Renaissance and at present contains some 400,000 entries.
Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, Section latine, 40, avenue d'Iéna, F-75116 Paris
The collection of incipits at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (Collegeville, MN, USA)
Since its founding in 1965, the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (HMML) has sent teams of researchers and technicians to film more than 25 million pages from nearly 90,000 volumes in libraries and archives throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Today, HMML represents one of the largest and most comprehensive archives of medieval and Renaissance sources in the world. Over the past 30 years, the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library has assembled a card file of more than 400,000 Latin incipits, making this the largest collection in the United States and one of the largest collections in the world. With a concentration of manuscripts from Austria, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Malta, HMML's records have proved to be geographically and topically complementary to those of IRHT.
Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, P.O. Box 7300, Saint John's University, Collegeville, MN 56321-7300 (USA)
The collection of incipits of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits (Paris, France)
The file-catalogue of incipits from the Latin catalogue has been built up over many years from a vast array of bibliographical sources in order to assist the work of the cataloguers of the Fonds latin. It also contains a large number of incipits drawn directly from the Latin manuscripts in the department's own hands. While this cannot be said to have been done systematically - except for a project in the 1950s to identify incipits from the Supplément latin collection - it does reflect the specific interests of the librarians. The inputting of the 180,000 records started in January 2002.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits (Catalogue latin), 58, rue de Richelieu, F-75084 Paris Cedex 02
Collections from other institutions and individual scholars
In Principio includes incipits from those other institutions and individual scholars willing to collaborate. Prof. Dr. Klaus Reinhardt, director of the Cusanus Institute in Trier, assisted by Dr. Tilo Altenburg, has graciously transferred to the database 40,000 records from the valuable Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi (Matriti, 1950-1980) whose indexes he himself developed with Friedrich Stegmüller.
In Principio is also grateful to Dr. Thomas Mathiesen, director of the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum, for allowing to include data from the Thesaurus.
Institutions and individual scholars who have built up their own incipit databases, whether electronic or on card-files, are warmly invited to collaborate and can make contact through one of the three academic partners or through Brepols Publishers directly.
|
