• Introduction
• Search
• Electronic Editions
• Indices
• Contact
• Resources
• About this Project

Practices, Definitions & Abbreviations

Documentation

• If no reference cited, codex information comes from the dominant library catalogue.
• If no reference cited, Life information comes from the most recent edition of the Life; if there is no edition, the information comes from the Leurquin-Labie inventory.

Codex Information

• Columns and lines per page: not necessarily used columns or lines, but those lined or otherwise indicated as intended (i.e., "variation in lines per page" does not factor in columns where the scribe has stopped half-way down the page or has added script beyond the lines)
• "Rubrics" & "table of contents" = original rubrics & table; those added later are "glosses"
• Incipits/explicits: transcription with abbreviations resolved, spacing preserved
• Measurements (incl. color): are representative. Any considerable variation within a ms is indicated.
• "Codex status" is one of the following:

uni- a unitary entity (complete ms as it was originally copied and bound).
compo - a composite entity, two or more separately made mss bound together.
frag- a small fragment of a ms.
def- a ms that is missing some folii or has damage to folii, but that is mostly complete.
unknown - difficult to determine which of the above categories is appropriate.
blank - no information yet collected

Lives & Legends

Lives and legends: stories about saints can be written either as independent biographies or as entries in a dictionary of saints or of other holy people.

Independent biographies (Lives) can be copied and bound together from early in their existence, but their length and internal coherence (often signaled by a prologue & epilogue that contain the author's explanation of how and why she or he wrote the text) continue to indicate their independent status. When they are bound together, it is rarely in comparable numbers to those of the legends contained in works like the Golden Legend.

There are a few examples of small compilations of Lives that were composed as compilations (rather than bound together), which is evident from their general prologues. Although they are not independent texts, we consider each story to be a Life because it is not in an encyclopedic compendium, and it would therefore be more likely to be read as literature rather than as a simple source of information.

Dictionary-form stories (legends) occur in compilations like Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend) and its many French translations, and like the Vita Patrum (Lives of the Fathers). The stories are not seen as independent texts, but as parts of the whole compilation. They may have introductory and/or concluding comments, but this material does not indicate that they are separate compositions.

Legends can be copied into groups of biographies (Lives); they are then seen as existing independently from their source, even if still belonging to a (new) collection of stories. They therefore become Lives.
A text on its own, without other Lives/legends, is a Life, no matter what its form.

The Lives of the Saints Project will include:

• all Lives that exist alone, even if they are sometimes bound with other hagiographic narratives (including more or less full translations of the Golden Legend, etc., such as Marie l'Égyptienne in Paris BN fr. 23112);
• all Lives that were composed and recorded in small compilations;
• all Lives that have been transformed directly into legends through editing and copied with other legends;
• all legends that were copied by themselves, with only texts that are not hagiographic narratives, with Lives or with a limited number of other legends. It can be argued that the compilers and readers saw these texts as Lives.

The Lives of the Saints Project will, at least initially, exclude all legends that are only copied within a translation of the Golden Legend, the Lives of the Fathers, or a similar text (some may be included as "Other Representations"); such a translation may be full or partial. 

Libraries and their abbreviations (contained within the Saints Project)

Home :: Published by The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities ::
© Copyright 2006 by Amy Ogden and the University of Virginia :: Contact