Cataloguing Principles
The manuscript catalogue provides data on all the manuscripts I was able to find that contain the three late antique accounts of the Trojan War:
- the Ephemeridos belli Troiani attributed to Dictys of Crete,
- the De excidio Troiae historia attributed to Dares of Phrygia,
- and the anonymous Excidium Troie.
In addition to the witnesses to the full texts of these works, the database includes excerpts as well as abridgements, summaries and rewritings such as the De origine Francorum that is based on the De excidio Troiae historia, and the Item de Aenea et Antenore and the De reditu Grecorum a Troia that are based on the Ephemeridos belli Troiani.
Ideally, all records will include rubrics, incipits and explicits for each item in a given manuscript. In these transcriptions, all abbreviations are silently expanded with no punctuation marks except for a full stop at the end. Missing letters are supplied within square brackets.
A bibliography is also being produced for each manuscript. I have personally checked each item that is included in the bibliography section of the records; nothing has been harvested from other databases or automatically carried forward from a previous catalogue. Relevant information found in these sources has been integrated into the descriptions on this website, but not all discrepancies have been noted.
Most importantly, each manuscript description has been provided a permanent link; this URL is intended to remain unchanged, with updates being indicated by the date at the end of each record. All manuscripts have also been given a record number; this is for internal reference and sorting purposes only and does not refer to an outside source.
Priorities
In terms of the lists of contents, priority is given to designate the nature (that is, whether the witness includes the full text or an excerpt, whether or not it is complete, etc.) and extent of the three late antique Trojan narratives in each manuscript. As detailed lists of contents are being entered for each manuscript, lists of witnesses to each work have been provided for convenience:
- Witnesses to Dictys of Crete’s Ephemeridos belli Troiani
- Witnesses to Dares of Phrygia’s De excidio Troiae historia
- Witnesses to the Excidium Troie
Providing links to available online facsimiles has also been prioritised and a full list of Manuscripts with an Online Facsimile is generated, which was last updated on November 1, 2020. If you are interested in examining the underlying data, see: Digital Facsimiles Available Online.
Current Status
The progress on data entry is as follows as of February 1, 2021:
- entry of shelfmarks: completed
- entry of old shelfmarks: in progress
- entry of links to available online facsimiles: completed
- entry of format: completed
- entry of support, number of leaves, size of leaves, collation, foliation, layout, hands, scribes, languages, date of origin, place of origin: in progress
If information is not yet entered, it is designated with a dash (-) in the relevant space.
The following information on manuscripts, which was also collected during the project, will be added in due time: signatures, catchwords, watermarks, decoration, marginalia, binding, provenance, acquisition.