The Rules of Transfering Incunabulum into Digital Media

The Original Edition:

Pelbartus de Themeswar. Sermones Pomerii de sanctis I-II. Augsburg, 1502.
RMK III. 104. (OSzK Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Budapest (Bibliotheca Nationalis Széchényiana): FM2/27), cf. MKSz Magyar Könyvszemle (Hungarian book review) 1960. 430.

The only difference between the digital edition and the original is that obvious spelling mistakes were corrected. When a word was used incorrectly the correct word can be found in the foot notes (for example: PA 001.B). When a source other than the original source was used to help read the text the information can also be found in the footnotes (for instance: Univ. Egyetemi Könyvtár, Budapest (Bibliotheca Universitatis Budapestinensis) Inc. 758: Hagenau 1500; RMK III. 21, RMK III. 25/c (Augsburg).)

Structure of the digital edition

Each sermo is in a seperate file. The file name is: a two letter (capitalized) abbreviation of the volume’s name; a space; and the number of the speech using arabic numbers. In books with less than 100 speeches each will have a 2 digit number, in books with 100 or more speeches each speech will have a 3 digit number, using enough zeros before the number to fill out the remaining spaces. After that number is a period. There are legends, texts that are not numbered in Pelbartus’ works. These texts are in seperate files. They are marked with the previous sermo’s file name with no period followed by a letter “a” (then “b” etc.). For example PA 072a. The tabula usually does not contain words from these texts. In case there is some outstanding information in these texts that should be mentioned in the tabula then there is the marking in the column that refers to the entire text.

Simple spacing,12 point font, left justified except for quotes from poems. The original form of the poem is left intact. Classical latin spelling is used. Henrik Finály’s Latin-Hungarian dictionary FINÁLY, Henrik, A latin nyelv szótára, Budapest 1884. (1991) is used with one exception: in this digital edition “j” is not used. For example: instead of subjicio, subicio is written (see section 11). Words that could not be found in the Finály dictionary were looked up in other dictionaries on medieval Latin. Words that could not be found in any dictionary are followed by a question mark in parenthesis. Basically, only words that can be identified are written down. If there is any uncertainty about a word it is followed by the probable reading of the word and a question mark in parenthesis. Special attention was paid to differentiating between the roots ‘tempt’ and ‘tent’.

The distinctios appear with bullets as list with no punctuation. The major dilatatio is left justified like the rest of the text and the minor dilatatios are indented. There are no extra lines before or after any dilatatios. The titles of the distinctios are written in bold font, for example: Circa primum principale de sanctitate eius est dicendum… If the text is divided into long sections then a new paragraph is started with the dividing words (primo, secundo etc.). If the text is divided into small sections then the dividing words are only written in bold font and no new paragraph is started.

The following are always written with lower case letters: beatus, sanctus with the exceptions of: Spiritus Sanctus, Sancta Trinitas, Sacra Scriptura, Scriptura (when refering to the Bible), Beata Virgo Maria, Hugo de Snacto Victore, etc. The word Ecclesia is capitalized when refering to the Church but the adjectives coming from the same root are not capitalized even though Christianus, Romanus, and so on are capitalized. Also capitalized are: Decalogus, Dominica, Quadragesima(le), Infernus, Paradisus, Purgatorium; but caelum is not capitalized. The word ’glossa’ is only capitalized when it refers to Glossa Ordinaria.

The punctuation used is according to Hungarian standard. Direct quotations are preceded by a colon. Indirect questions start with a comma, the first word is not capitalized. Direct questions are preceded by a colon, the first word is capitalized and they end with a question mark. The colons found within incunabulum are usually written as commas, however semi-colons are prefered in order to avoid dividing the text. The excessive use of commas is avoided in such expressions as: …, eo quod; O anima mea, …; Primo qua… After „id est” no colon is used.

Quotations

Biblical quotations are identified and their locus is mentioned in the footnotes according to the Stuttgart Vulgata-editio standards. (It is important to note that the footnote signal is in simple font.) The abbreviations within the quotations are written out according to the unabbreviated form in the Vulgata Clementina and no note is made of these alterations. If Pelbartus’ quotation differs from the text of the given locus then it is marked in the footnotes with a „Cf.” followed by the proper locus. If Pelbartus’ locus number differs from the written quote then the proper locus is written in the footnotes in bold font. The writing of Biblical names are according to the Vulgata Clementina: http://vulsearch.sourceforge.net/gettex.html.

The abbreviations of names and titles of non-Biblical citations are written out. The actual titles are capitalized and the authors’ names are declined according to the meaning of the sentence. Expressions such as legenda, legitur, Ecclesia canit, versus, doctores communiter are usually citations so they are marked according the rules for citations. Citations without names such as „ubi supra”, „ibidem”, „idem” are only marked if the locus contains new elements such as: Bonaventura ubi supra dist. I. q. I.

In citations to the (canon)law the medieval practice is used. Only the abbreviation of certain words are standardized just like in citations to theological literature. The word or words of the incipit (because they do not fit into the text) are put in quotations marks and start with a capital letter.
For example:
dist. X. „Quis nesciat” Innocentius dicit: …
(Decretum Gratiani, prima pars; in between the number of the distinctio and the incipit may also be q. + a number and c. + a number. The „c.” = canon = caput = capitulum)

XVI. q. I. „Sunt quaedam”
(Decretum Gratiani, secunda pars; The number appearing by itself refers to the causa; before the incipit may be „c.”)

de poenitentia dist. III. „Sane” et c. „Irrisor”
(Decretum Gratiani, secuda pars, 33. causa, 3 quaestio may appear as an individual tractatus with the title De poenitentia; instead of „c.” the § symbol may be used; the abbreviation „de pe.” is written spelled out)

de consecratione dist. IV. „Prima igitur” or
de consecratione dist. III. c. ultimo
Decretum Gratiani, tertia pars = De consecratione)
Ambrosius de consecratione dist. II. c. [„Omnia quaecumque”]: Omnia – inquit – quaecumque …
(Here the words of the incipit are the same as the first words as Pelbartus’ quotation so it is not written down both as a locus and as a quote, but the incipit is put in brackets and is written before the quotation.)

extra de haereticis c. I.
extra de summa Trinitate et fide catholica c. „Damnamus”
(Decretales IX. Gregorii = Liber extra; because of this no period is needed after the word „extra” however they are also occasionally refered to as extravagantes.)

Clementina de reliquiis et veneratione sanctorum c. „Si Dominum”
(Clementinae epistolae decretales)

C. de episcopali audientia L. „Nemo”
(Codex Iustiniani; the „C” means constitutio)

ff. de origine iuris l. II. § „Exactis” li. I.
(Digesta = Pandectae; l. = lex (?))
in Authenticis § „Sedebunt”
(Liber Authenticorum = „authenticae constitutiones” is the name when placed after the constitutio of the Codex, = Novella)

Once more about abbreviations

The Tabula Aucta contains the contents of the copied volumes’ Tabula Alphabeticas, with certain changes. As a result of the standardized spelling (for example: Xpus is changed to Christus, Katherina is spelled Catherina, katena is spelled catena) their place in the alphabetical order changes. Change is also necessary in the case of such topic words (voces) where the key word is proceded by a praepositio. In these cases the key words are listed first in nominativus case followed by the voces. The marking of the locus contains the abbreviation of the volume, the number of the sermo within the volume (with arabic numerals, with zeros added to make the number two or three digits long). When using links to find information that appears in more than one section (as noted by capital letters at the end of the sections) then the link connects to the section where the information first appears.

The Tabula Aucta contains more than what is in the copied versions’ Tabula Alphateticas. This new material appears differently than the information that was originally part of the Tabula Alphabeticas in that the new information’s locus marking is written with lowercase letters. For example: PA: original material - pa: new material. The user can view as well as contribute to the collection of additional words that are listed according to the order of the locuses (secundum ordinem locorun). The method of Pelbárt’s contempories is used for defining new topic words; most of these topic words are taken directly from the text. The only new or different aspect of the digital edition’s method of defining topic words is that the citations of auctoritas are also listed after the topic word, seperated by a hyphen. The question-like topic words were defined by Pelbárt’s contemporaries as direct of indirect questions. In this edition they are all indicativus.
Some of the new topic words need additional explaination. Passages of the text that are exemplums according to the author are registered. This group of exemplums are not yet categorized. Topic words that start with the expression Ecclesia canit, which are more or less quotations from the liturgical text are in a separate collection which has also not yet been categorized. Just like the Ecclesia canit collections, there are several other groups. There is group for versus collection which would be worth analyzing side by side with H. WALTHER’s Proverbia Sententiaeque. The group of proverbium is made up of sentences that were interpreted as proverbs by the writers of this program. The alphabetum ut ratio divisiones type of topic words that were sometimes unnoticed by Pelbartus’ contempories are included here. The collection of newly added topic words that refer to visual representation and that start with the word depingitur or imago are full of potential for future research, especially that Pelbartus died before the time that is considered to be the birth of the emblem genre. Rare manifestations of the authors own experiences are found under topic words starting with ego. Topic words that start with the word Iudaei, or niger homo are also interesting because of their possible prejudiced usage. There is also a dilemma about whether to put words such as: aenigma, antonomasia, compilare, denominatio, litotes, etc under the topic word rhetorica.

The main purpose of the index of names is that persons and geographical names appearing in the text can be searched for as spelled in the text. Comments appearing in parenthesis are either to show the difference between identical names or to make identification of the name easier. In some cases the version of the word after the equal sign is simply another way of refering to the same name. For example: Aristoteles = Philosophus, Discipulus = Iohannes Herolt and so on. In certain cases even the distorted spellings or other forms of the name are listed because it is useful for studies on the changing of traditions. The amount of cited books that appear without an author is relatively small, in these cases the identification of the author, even if it is obvious, is avoided since main focus is on the title of the cited works. The greatest intervention that was done to these titles was in the case of Vitae Patrum. The original text repeatedly used the form in Vitaspatrum however this form does not fit with the digital edition’s spelling standards, thus it now appears as in Vitis Patrum in the digital edition.