Datasets:
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
- la
tags:
- letters
- medieval
Carolingian Letters Dataset
Overview
This dataset contains a collection of letters from prominent Carolingian scholars and ecclesiastical figures. The letters are sourced from the Patrologia Latina and were downloaded as XML from Corpus Corporum (https://mlat.uzh.ch/browser?path=home).
Current Contents
The dataset currently includes letters from the following Carolingian authors:
| Author | Included |
|---|---|
| Alcuin | ✅ |
| Lupus of Ferrières | ✅ |
| Hincmar of Rheims | ❌ |
| Hrabanus Maurus | ❌ |
Data Source
The letters in this dataset are derived from the Patrologia Latina, a comprehensive collection of texts from the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers. The XML versions of these texts were obtained from Corpus Corporum, a digital library of Latin texts hosted by the University of Zurich.
Carolingian Letters Dataset
Data Fields
The dataset includes the following fields for each letter:
Author: The name of the Carolingian scholar or ecclesiastical figure who wrote the letter. Currently, this includes Alcuin and Lupus of Ferrières, with plans to add more authors in the future.
Recipients: The name(s) of the individual(s) to whom the letter was addressed. This field may contain multiple names if the letter was sent to more than one person. It may be empty if the recipient is unknown or not specified in the source text.
Date: The date of the letter's composition, if known. This field may be empty if the date is not specified in the source text. Dates may be expressed in various formats, including specific years, ranges of years, or descriptive terms (e.g., "circa 800").
PL Number: The number assigned to the letter in the Patrologia Latina (PL) edition. This serves as a unique identifier for each letter within an author's corpus and allows for easy cross-referencing with the printed edition.
PL Head: The header information as it appears in the Patrologia Latina edition. This often includes a brief summary or description of the letter's content, which can be in Latin.
Salutation: The opening greeting of the letter. This typically includes the name or title of the recipient and a formal greeting, often in a standardized format common to medieval letter-writing practices.
Main text content: The body of the letter, containing the primary message or content. This field includes the full text of the letter, excluding the salutation and any notes or bracketed content.
Notes: Any explanatory notes or commentary provided in the Patrologia Latina edition. These notes often provide historical context, explain obscure references, or offer textual variants. In our dataset, these are typically extracted from parenthetical comments in the source text.
Bracketed content: Any text that appeared within square brackets [ ] in the source edition. This often represents editorial additions, clarifications, or uncertain readings in the manuscript tradition.
Usage Notes
- Some fields may be empty for certain letters if the information was not available in the source text.
- The 'Main text content' field has been processed to remove page break markers and normalize whitespace, but otherwise preserves the content as it appears in the Patrologia Latina.
- Users should be aware that the 'Notes' and 'Bracketed content' fields may contain important contextual information or text-critical details that are separate from the main body of the letter.
Usage
This dataset is intended for researchers, historians, and students interested in Carolingian history, medieval Latin literature, and the intellectual networks of the early medieval period. It can be used for various analyses, including:
- Textual analysis of Carolingian Latin
- Network analysis of Carolingian scholars and their correspondents
- Historical research on Carolingian politics, religion, and culture
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Corpus Corporum project at the University of Zurich for making these texts available in a digital format.