RICERCA ITALIANA     

Latin Middle Ages

Università degli Studi di Salerno

Abstract

"Medioevo latino. Bollettino bibliografico della cultura europea da Boezio a Erasmo (secoli VI-XV)" is a yearly bibliography that informs on the medievistic production of the former year. The review has been regularly published since 1980. From the bibliographic point of view "Medioevo latino" distinguishes itself by the fact that it gives not only a list of titles, but also a summary of their content. It is in fact the final result of a systematic, complete and direct perusal of books, reviews and bulletins regarding medieval culture and history. The bibliographic data taken into consideration have systematically grown, both for the widening of the chronological period (from the period between VI and XIII centuries of the first 12 issues, to the period between VI and XV centuries of the 13th and following issues) and for the increasing number of examined reviews.
The experience gained through the years and the better knowledge of the contents have led to some modifications in the inner structure of the Bulletin, so that it can offer now a more specialist and articulated classification of data. The organization of the material, more articulated from the volume IX (with some little amendments and corrections in volumes X and XI), has been structured from the volume XXIII within the following reference grid:
First Part: Authors and texts (where the records are ordered under the lemma of the medieval author or, if anonymous, under the title of >>>

Principal Investigator

Ileana Pagani Università degli Studi di SALERNO

Research Objectives

Production of "Medioevo latino. Bollettino bibliografico della cultura europea da Boezio a Erasmo (secoli VI-XV)". It is a bibliography of texts about the Middle Ages, in particular about Latin Middle Ages and, at the same time, a bibliography including information on disciplines, literary genres and institutions of the same period. There are two specific sections for indication of reference books, conferences and miscellanies concerning latin Middle Ages. From volume XVII (1996) an appendix is present: it includes the list of authors, texts and works contained in catalogues of manuscripts recently published. "Medioevo latino" is at the moment the only instrument in his genre in the worldwide medievistic. Specialized bibliographies also will be published: they will be obtained from the general data-base bibliography.

First Results

In the european context there are a few bibliographical resources for the study of medieval cultural heritage, characterized by different levels of specialization, diffusion an impact in the scientific community (bothe at a national and international level). «Medioevo latino» is an higly-specialized research tool, due to the process of selection of the bibliographical informations. The latters are gathered through the indexation of various international scientific journals and publications (mainly written in german, english, french, italian and spanish). The diffusion of “Medioevo latino” (which has been published regularly since 1980) is testified by the high volume of scientific publications sent for review to the central editorial staff.

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The bibliographical information is a necessary instrument of every kind of scientific research: there is in fact no real knowledge without considering the continuous progress of research and studies. This is particularly important as concerns philological and historical subjects. Two conditions are significant for them: first of all the possibility of yearly and updated information, second, the availability of the past bibliography, the knowledge of which is a necessary stage of research. As concerns classical studies, a yearly bibliography was and is still available: the journal "Année philologique". But as concerns medieval studies, no general bibliography like the "Année philologique" existed until 1970. There were special bibliographies like that on medieval manuscripts edited by the journal "Scriptorium", on ecclesiastical history edited by the journal "Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique", on medieval canon law edited by the "Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law", or like the ones edited by the "Deutsches Archiv" and by the "International Medieval Bibliography" (the last one informs only of articles in journals and miscellanies - but not at all of monographies - about history and, in particular, about history of institutions), and of course there were special bibliographies on sigle authors. A yearly bibliography about Middle Ages was for this reason extremely necessary and urgent, expecially because >>>