This is an ongoing digitalization project of the library of King Matthias I of Hungary or Hunyadi Mátyás (1443-1490). From a brief scan of the holdings here (by the way click on the orange dot for the images and the blue one for the bibliographic information), there are quite a bit of early printed books and illuminated texts of patristic and medieval theologians, philosophers, and poets in Greek, Latin, and medieval Hungarian. It is well done, but at the current time it does not have the option to download in full pdf. At the present time they only have roughly 50 works scanned, but don’t despise the day of small beginnings there are still some gems available like Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians, which is pictured at the left.

Of course you could go at it one right click at a time …

By the way, if you want to try your hand at a little bit of Latin Paleography on this text just for kicks, try this.

The Italian humanist Niccolo Perotti was one of the most influential Latinists of the Renaissance era for his editions of classical texts as well as the grammatical commentary. Even into the modern era, his work is greatly appreciated among scholars of the period for its insight into humanist neo-Latin grammar. For any serious scholar of the era, I would encourage you to find a copy (however, be warned - one of the volumes of the 3rd edition Aldus printing - the Cornucopia - is priced at roughly $13k US in a rare book store).

Also, for those interested here is a 1608 Perotti edition of the text of Polybius with no less than Wolfgang Musculus’ interpretation included.

Although not a complete set, Google books has the following and the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek has others:

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Here are a few links that are extraordinarily helpful for working with the various “hands” of medieval paleography. 

• • • Resources from a Medieval Latin Paleography course at Stanford. - This is a great resource for manuscripts from Britain, Ireland, the Iberian peninsula, France, Belgium, German, and Italian.
    • D. Tillotson’s Medieval Writing site.
    • EVELLUM - various software programs (for purchase)  for the electronic study of medieval paleography. See especially DUCTUS for the period 150 AD - 1500 AD.
    • Resources for Medieval Studies from Georgetown University - LABYRINTH
    • Collections of Manuscripts online:
• •  
    •  
      • Diocese of Cologne, Codices E. Ecclesiae Coloniensis
      • Dublin, Trinity College Library
      • National Library of Ireland
      • Oxford, Bodleian Library, by period & place
      • Oxford, Bodleian Library, Checklist of Mss. to 1500
      • Oxford, Bodleian Library treasures, shelf mark
      • Philadelphia (?), Lawrence Schoenberg Collection
      • St. Gallen, Switzerland, Codices E. Sangallenses

Enjoy!

This site is a little known gem of transcribed renaissance texts and is well worth your time. I first stumbled across this while pursuing the 17th c. Reformed theologian, Petrus van Mastricht’s citation of a 15th c. Italian neo-Platonist Marsilius Ficinius’ work De Christiana Religione Liber. BIVIO is a collaborative project hosted in Pisa, Italy since 2002 among several organizations and institutions: The Institute for Renaissance Studies and Signum (The Center for Computer Research in the Humanities of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa), the Ministero per le Attività Culturali-Direzione Generale per i Beni Librari e gli Istituti Culturali, and the History Department at Harvard University.

Found this the other day while poking about for other “distinction” and “definition” books of theology besides Alsted. This particular piece largely deals with scholastic theological and philosophical distinctions found in Roman Catholic theology, especially the Medieval and patristic period. Not a bad resource to have around. It is totally in Latin.

Just a quick list of exceedingly helpful codices and lexicons for Latin Abbreviations. Most of these are for medieval uncial scripts, but many if not most of the abbreviations carried over into the printing of the 15th through 17th centuries. Of the four listed, Cappelli is probably the most exhaustive.

Chassant, Alphonse, Dictionnaire des abreviations latines et francaises usitees dans les inscriptions lapidaires et metalliques, les manuscrits et les chartes du Moyen Âge. Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1965.

 Cappelli, Adriano. Lexicon abbreviaturarum : dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane usate nelle carte e codici specialmente del Medio-Evo, riprodotte con oltre 14000  segni incisi, con l’aggiunta di uno studio sulla brachigrafia medioevale, un prontuario di sigle epigrafiche, l’antica numerazione romana ed arabica ed i segni indicanti monete, pesi, misure, etc. / per cura di Adriano Cappelli. Milano : Hoepli, c1990.

Lindsay, W. M. Notae latinae, an account of abbreviation in Latin MSS. of the early minuscule period (c. 700-850) by W. M. Lindsay. With a supplement (Abbreviations in Latin MSS. of 850 to 1050) by D. Bains. Hildesheim, G. Olms, 1963.

Pelzer, Auguste, Abreviations latines medievales. Supplement au Dizionario di abbreviature latine, ed. italiane, de Adriano Cappelli. Louvain, Publications Universitaires; Paris, Beatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1966.

They make your brain hurt don’t they? or at least your eyes!

For anyone out there working with primary sources (the very real deal - manuscripts, codices, tomes of patristic, medieval, and Reformation texts) in the fields of History of Exegesis, Greek Paleography, and any other variant of ancient Greek, especially inscriptions and abbreviations, the following little book is a rare gem.

Abbreviations in Greek Inscriptions: Papyri, Manuscripts, and Early Printed Books Ares Publishers, Inc. (Chicago: 1974) is a compilation by Al. N. Oikonomides (classics professor at Loyola University in Chicago) of monographs by Avi-Yonah, Kenyon, Allen, Ostermann, and Giegengack. Maybe 30 pages total, but definitely a must have (yes, it’s about a $1 a page … but if you really need it, well worth every penny!). As you can see, this isn’t Nestle-Aland 4 ed. (For a few more images, look here, here, and my personal favorites for epeidh and outos here.)

By the way, from my modest experience in 16th century texts so far, in a folio (~14 x 10) work these fonts are about a size 8 font. In a quarto (~10 x 8 ) about the same. In an octavo (~8 x 6) about a size 7 or 6, and in a sedecimo (~6 x 3) these bad boys are a size five or six font italicized!

(at least one more reason why the libraries of the world won’t ever <totally> be text-recognized in a database on Google Books …)

Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270 - 1349) was a French Franciscan doctor who was well known in his own day for his biblical exegesis and was studied voraciously throughout the period up to and including the Reformation, for example Martin Luther and his mentor Johann von Staupitz.  His Postillae Perpetuae in universam S. Scripturam was the first printed full commentary on Scripture (Rome, 1471). The exposition of the biblical text is methodologically in full agreement with Thomas Aquinas’ method of exegesis in the four ways (literal, tropological, anagogical, moral); or to put it another way, Faith, Hope, and Love founded on the literal meaning of the text, which itself can be traced back to Augustine. He would also interpret the Vulgate in light of Hebrew texts and even rabbinic literature. Thus in many ways he is a fore-runner to the Reformation. 

Nicholas comments in his work In Nomine Sanctae Trinitatis … de commendatione sacrae Scripturae in generali (see Migne’s Patrologia Latina vol. 113 cols 25 - 30) that Holy Scripture outstrips philosophers because philosophers are only concerned with this present life and must judge and determine based on this present life. On the other hand, Scripture aims at (more…)