Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams

Search tips and tricks

We hope this page to be helpful for all our users, the well-seasoned ones as well as the neophytes.

Should anything remain unclear, please do not hesitate to get in touch. We won't bite.

You can search the following five categories:

Unlike before, you can now save your searches by copying the - admittedly rather long - URL in the address bar. Here for example you can find all 11th-century author-related Occurrences written in dodecasyllables containing the (exact) word Θεός. As much as we would like to give you a personal DBBE account which would allow you to store your searches more efficiently, for various reasons we are currently unable to do so.

How to search for Occurrences and Types?

As explained on our general Help page, Occurrences and Types are two distinct categories in our database: 

  • Occurrences reproduce the text of individual epigrams exactly as it is found in the manuscripts, including all sorts of idiosyncrasies. 
  • Types on the other hand are normalised texts that (often) overarche a number of similar Occurrences.

Searching for Occurrences however is much the same as searching for Types, which is why on this page we will address these two categories together.
The main difference is that some filters are to be found on the Occurrence search page that are missing on the Type search page and vice versa.

Unless stated otherwise, all examples are drawn from the Occurrences. 

Text search

Lemmatisation?

Unfortunately, the texts in our database have not been lemmatised (yet). Please do reach out if you can help us any further with this!

For the time being registered users can search a stemmed text, on which see:

Wildcards

By using wildcards, you can work around the fact that our texts are not lemmatised (yet). 

Below are some examples.

If you search for ανθρωπ*, you get all words starting with ανθρωπ 

  • ἀνθρωπίσκον
  • ἀνθρώπινον 
  • ἀνθρώποις 
  • ἄνθρωπος

Note that searching for ανθρωπ (without the wildcard) will yield no results, as the word ανθρωπ does not appear in our database.

If you search for *ανθρωπος, you get all words ending with ανθρωπος

  • φιλάνθρωπος
  • θεάνθρωπος 
  • but also ἄνθρωπος

Note that if you search for *ανθρωπος you also get ἄνθρωπος itself. To exclude ἄνθρωπος, search for *?ανθρωπος instead.

If you search for *θρωπ*, you get all words that contain the string θρωπ

  • μυριάνθρωπον
  • φιλανθρωπίᾳ 
  • φίλανθρωπος 
  • ἀνθρώπινον
  • ἄνθρωπος 

Note that searching for θρωπ (without the wildcards) will yield no results, as the word θρωπ does not appear in our database.

If you search for υψ*θεν, you get all words that begin with υψ and end with θεν no matter what stands in between

  • ὑψίθεν
  • ὑψόθεν
  • ὑψοίθεν

If you search instead for υψ?θεν, you get all words that begin with υψ and end with θεν with exactly one letter in between

  • ὑψίθεν
  • ὑψόθεν
  • but not ὑψοίθεν

Word combination options

Match any words (default)

  • If you search for θεος βροτος, you get:
    • records containing either θεος or βροτος
    • as well as records containing both θεος and βροτος
  • Alternative: θεος OR βροτος
  • Compatible with wildcards.

Match all words

Match only consecutive words 

  • If you search for θεος βροτος, you get:
    • records containing the exact phrase θεος βροτος, viz. θεος immediately followed by βροτος
  • Alternative: "θεος βροτος" 
  • Not compatible with wildcards!

Personalised searches

Below are some examples of how to personalise your searches.

If you search for θεος AND -βροτος, you get all records containing 

  • θεος 
  • but not βροτος

If you search for "θεος βροτος" AND θεοφανη, you get all records containing

  • the exact phrase θεος βροτος
  • and θεοφανη

If you search for "θεος βροτος" AND θεοφαν*, you get all records containing

  • the exact phrase θεος βροτος
  • and any word starting with θεοφαν (allowing for misspellings of the name Θεοφάνης) 

If you search for "θεος βροτος" AND -θεοφαν*, you get all records containing

  • the exact phrase θεος βροτος
  • but not words starting with θεοφαν

If you search for βροντης AND (γονον OR γονε), you get all records containing

  • βροντης
  • and either γονον or γονε

If you search for βροντης AND (γονον OR γονε) AND -σαλπιγ*, you get all records containing

  • βροντης
  • and either γονον or γονε
  • but not words starting with σαλπιγ

You can also use regular expressions.
Below are some examples. Please do get in touch if you have more examples and we will happily add them to this list. 

Iota subscriptum

An unforseen disadvantage of our texts not being lemmatised has to do with the iota subscriptum. 

There are three spelling variants of the dative singular of the noun πόθος in our database, namely: 

  • πόθῳ (with iota subscriptum)
  • πόθωι (with iota adscriptum)
  • πόθω (without iota)

If you search for ποθῳ, you only get

  • πόθῳ (with iota subscriptum)
  • πόθωι (with iota adscriptum)

If you search for ποθω, you only get

  • πόθω (without iota)

In order to find all three spelling variants, you have to search for ποθω ποθῳ and select the "Match any words" option.

Alternatively you can search for ποθω OR ποθῳ, which will yield the exact same results but allows for further personalisation.
If for example you search for (ποθω OR ποθῳ) AND δελτον, you get all records containing 

  • ποθῳ, ποθωι or ποθω
  • as well as δελτον

Below are some other examples of personalised searches related to the iota subscriptum.

What fields should be searched?

You can search:

  • the text of a record (default)
  • the title
  • both the text and the title 

Date (Occurrences only)

Year from / Year to
In order to optimise the searchability of our database we had no other option but to convert widely used expressions to specific date intervals:

  • 11th century: 1001-1100
  • early 11th century: 1001-1010
  • first quarter 11th century: 1001-1025
  • second quarter 11th century: 1026-1050
  • mid 11th century: 1045-1055
  • third quarter 11th century: 1051-1075
  • last quarter 11th century: 1076-1100
  • late 11th century: 1091-1100

So the 11th century runs from the beginning of 1001 until the end of 1100. Of course, this does not mean that an 11th-century Occurrence was written exactly between 01/01/1001 and 31/12/1100. These two dates are not a known ante / post quem and thus cannot be used as start and end date respectively. In order to account for this inexactness, behind the scenes we make use of so-called fuzzy date intervals. This means that we use the same date interval 01/01/1001-31/12/1100 both as start and as end date. That way, our database "knows" the dating of this Occurrence is inexact.

The same way we deal with dates that are elsewhere preceded by "circa". If for exampele an Occurrence was written "circa 1100" we use the date interval 01/01/1100-31/12/1100 both as start and as end date. That way, this Occurrences is differentiated from Occurrences of which we know certain that they were written in 1100. For those we use 01/01/1100 as start date and 31/12/1100 as end date. Admittedly, "circa 1100" could also be understood as shortly before or after 1100. Instead of endlessly discussing how many years "shortly" means, we decided to just not go there. For more information regarding fuzzy date intervals and the Humanities, we recommend this excellent (and fun!) presentation by David Newbury, data architect at The Getty.

As for dates that are uncertain rather than imprecise, we are still looking for a way to deal with them properly. Please do get in touch, should you have any suggestions.

Depending on your personal interests, we offer the following three search options:

"exactly match" (default)
the results interval exactly matches the search interval

  • Year from: 1001 and Year to: 1100
    • You will find all records that are dated exactly to the 11th century.
    • You will not find records that are dated to the 10th-12th century and thus may have been written in the 11th century.
    • Nor will you find records that are dated to the year 1099, even though they too obviously belong to the 11th century.
  • Year from: 1099 and Year to: 1099
    • You will find all records that are dated to the year 1099.
    • You will not find records that are dated to the 11th century and thus may have been written in 1099.

"be included in"
the results interval either exactly matches or is smaller than the search interval 

  • Year from: 1001 and Year to: 1100
    • You will find all records that are dated exactly to the 11th century.
    • You will also find records that are dated somewhere in the 11th century, for example to the year 1099.

"overlap with"
the results interval either exactly matches or is bigger than the search interval (at both ends)

  • Year from: 1001 and Year to: 1100
    • You will find all records that are dated exactly to the 11th century.
    • You will also find records that are dated somewhere in the 11th century, for example to the year 1099.
    • You will even find records that are dated to the 10th-12th century and thus may have been written in the 11th century.

Person and Role

Both Occurrences and Types can be search on related persons. 
Once you have selected a person from the first dropdown list, you can refine your search by selecting a role from the second one: scribe and patron for Occurrences and poet for Types. Please note that only those roles are shown that are applicabe to the selected person. Should you wish to search on role directly, you can do so through the Persons search page. 
Although multiple persons can be related to an Occurrence or Type, for the time being it is impossible to search on more than one person at the same time. 

Metre

Both Occurrences and Types can be searched on metre.
Although some epigrams combine multiple metres, for the time being it is impossible to search on more than one metre at the same time.

Genre

Both Occurrences and Types can be searched on genre.
As with persons and metre, for the time being it is impossible to search on more than one genre at the same time. 

Subject

Both Occurrences and Types can be searched on subject.
Again, for the time being it is impossible to search on more than one subject at the same time.

Tag (Types only)

Apart from subject, Types can be searched on tags as well.
Again, for the time being it is impossible to search on more than one tag at the same time.

Manuscript Content (Occurrences only)

Occurrences can be searched on the content of the manuscript they are preserved in. 
Please note that we are using a parent-child system to describe the content of our manuscripts. If for example you search on "Biblica" you will find all Occurrences in biblical manuscripts, including the Old and New testament. If you are interested in Old or New Testament manuscripts only, you should select "Biblica > Vetus Testamentum" or "Biblica > Novum Testamentum" respectively.

Comment

Both Occurrences and Types can be searched for whatever comment you can think of. You might want to use wildcards to search for certain recurring expressions.

Identifiers

Occurrences can be searched on the following identifiers:

Types can be searched on the following identifiers:

Acknowledgements

Both Occurrences and Types can be searched on acknowledgements.
For the time being you cannot search on contributions by individual DBBE members only on contributions by you, friends of DBBE. We are too modest, we know.

Transcribed by DBBE (Occurrences only) / Text source DBBE (Types only)

Should you like to narrow your search to Occurrences or Types established by us ourselves, you can do so by selecting "Transcribed by DBBE" and "Text source DBBE" respectively. Apparently we are not that modest after all ...

How to search for Manuscripts?

You can search for

  • a specific manuscript based on City, Library, Collection and Shelfmark number.
  • all manuscripts from a certain City, Library or Collection (in this order).

Date

Year from / Year to
As with Occurrences, you have three options. 

Content

As explained above, we are using a parent-child system to describe the content of our manuscripts. If for example you search on "Biblica" you will find all Occurrences in biblical manuscripts, including the Old and New testament. If you are interested in Old or New Testament manuscripts only, you should select "Biblica > Vetus Testamentum" or "Biblica > Novum Testamentum" respectively.

Person and Role

Once you have selected a person from the first dropdown list, you can refine your search by selecting a role from the second one: scribe, patron or generally related. Please note that only those roles are shown that are applicabe to the selected person. Should you wish to search on role directly, you can do so through the Persons search page. 
Although multiple persons can be related to a manuscript, for the time being it is impossible to search on more than one person at the same time. 

Origin

Whenever available we indicate where our manuscripts originate from. Here too we use a parent-child system. If for example you search on "Italy" you will find all manuscripts written in Italy. If you are interested in manuscripts from Southern Italy, from Calabria or even from Rossano in Calabria only, you should select respectively "Italy > Southern Italy", "Italy > Southern Italy > Calabria" or "Italy > Southern Italy > Calabria > Rossano". 

Note that we adopted a comprehensive system of describing places, both for modern purposes (e.g., where a manuscript is now stored), and for historical purposes (e.g., where a manuscript was originally written). That is why you will find historical place names with modern country names next to them. This is not historically correct, but enables us to later visualize geographical data.

Comment

Manuscripts can be searched for whatever comment you can think of. You might want to use wildcards to search for certain recurring expressions.

Acknowledgements

Manuscripts can be searched on acknowledgements.
As said above, for the time being you cannot search on contributions by individual DBBE members only on contributions by our friends.

How to search for Persons?

Name

We decided to transliterate Greek proper names following the system proposed by Herbert Weir Smyth in his Greek Grammar for Colleges §1 rather than Anglicising them, so Gregorios and not Gregory.

  • Case insensitive
    Searching for Alexios or alexios will yield the exact same results.
  • As with Occurrences and Types, you can use wildcards to personalise your search.
    • If you search for alex*, you get all Names starting with "alex" such as 
    • Note that searching simply for alex will not yield any results because there is no Alex in our database. 
    • If for example you want to list all Persons starting with the letter a, search for a*. 
      Note that searching simply for a will not yield any results, since the Person "a" does not exist in our database.
  • You can also use regular expressions. 

Behind the scenes names are split up into different components, all of which are taken into account upon entering text in the name field. When searching for "Kosmas", you will find the 6th-century hermit Kosmas (first name) Indikopleustes as well as Antonios Kosmas (last name), a scribe from the second half of the 14th century.

Date

Year from / Year to
As with Occurrences, you have three options. 

Role

You can search for

  • scribes linked to Occurrences and manuscripts 
  • patrons linked to Occurrences and manuscripts
  • poets linked to Types
  • persons generally related to manuscripts

Office

Official office(s) held by persons in our database, such as: 

As you can see, we decided to transliterate these offices following the system proposed by Herbert Weir Smyth in his Greek Grammar for Colleges §1 rather than translating them. 

Although multiple offices can be related to one person, for the time being it is impossible to search on more than one office at the same time. 

Please note that we are using a parent-child system for offices. If for example you search on "episkopos" you will find all persons that held this office regardless of where they held it.

(Self) designation

A combination of

As you can see, we decided not to transliterate (self) designations. Instead we kept the original Greek just as it is found in the primary sources or in the Repertoria.

Why did we put "self" between brackets? Because unfortunately from the entries in the old database, we were not able to tell which persons called themselves ῥακενδύτης and which were called ῥακενδύτης by others. Also, we couldn't tell whether this 12th-century Basileios was referred to as an ἄθλιος μοναχός or rather as both a μοναχός and ἄθλιος. To be on the safe side, we decided in favour of the latter. 

Origination

Indicates where a person originated from; and uses a parent-child system: Petros of Rethymno comes from Crete, and is listed among other persons coming from that island.  Unfortunately, places do not have separate detail pages yet listing all records in our database linked to them. We are however working very hard to make this possible. Quite a few places for example have already been linked to Pleiades, albeit behind the scenes.

Comment

You can search whatever comment you can think of. You might want to use wildcards to search for certain recurring expressions.

Identifiers

RGK references are given as:

  • volume number in Roman numerals 
  • followed by a dot
  • and a unique number

For example, III.150 refers to a 13th-century Gregorios discussed in RGK volume III.

VGH references are given as:

  • page number in VGH 
  • followed by a dot
  • and a capital letter.

We established this letter by giving each person mentioned on a specific page in VGH a letter in alphabetical order. For example, 40.D refers to a 15th-century Antonios discussed in VGH page 40.

PBW references are the permalinks provided for each individual on PBW (2016) person pages. For example, Michael/61/ refers to Michael Psellos. We are adding all these references manually so please be patient with us. Also, do reach out should you know of a less time consuming way to reference this database. Any API experts in the room?

How to search for Bibliography?

Type

The options are:

Title

Person and Role

Choose a name from the first dropdown list. You can either scroll through the list or start typing the (last) name of the person you are looking for. Only then you can narrow down your search by selecting a role (author, editor, or translator). 

Comment

You can search for whatever comment you can think of. You might want to use wildcards to search for certain recurring expressions.

The detail pages

As explained above, by combining various filters you can search DBBE for example for 11th-century author-related Occurrences written in dodecasyllables containing the (exact) word Θεός. You will be provided with a list of all Occurrences matching these criteria, that you can sort to your liking. For each Occurrence listed you can easily click through to the Occurrence detail page where more information is to be found, including - of course - the actual text.

Such detail pages exist for all five searchable categories mentioned above, namely Occurrences, Types, Manuscripts, Persons and Bibliography. They form the backbone of our database.

Below you find an overview of the information found on each of these detail pages. Since most of this information is searchable and thus has been dealt with above, we can be brief.

The Occurrence detail pages

DBBE identifier

All Occurrences have been assigned a unique DBBE identifier. Please include in your communication this identifier as well as the exact date on which you consulted an Occurrence. Whether or not you include the permalink as well is up to you. More information and examples are to be found on our general Help page.

Title

If present in the manuscript, the title (sometimes called "lemma") of the epigram is given.

Text

See also methodologies and practices.

Transcriptions have been made as faithfully as possible, according to the standards of diplomatic editions.
More specifically, the following editorial conventions have been used:

  • (…) indicates that either the text is not readable or our source does not provide the whole text.
  • Abbreviations of nomina sacra are resolved and the missing text is placed within round brackets.
  • The distinction between majuscule and minuscule letters is normalised.
  • The punctuation found in the manuscript is reproduced.
  • The spelling found in the manuscript is reproduced.
    Please note that we do not indicate spelling mistakes. If you do come across "sic", it is because we did not transcribe the text ourselves but took it over from somewhere else (on which, see "Text source" below).

A practical tip for those of you wanting to copy the text of our Occurrences:
Make sure to "paste without formatting" when using Google Doc or "paste as unformatted text" when using Word. Oh, and don't forget to cite us.

Verse variants (NEW!)

Probably the most striking new feature of our new database.

Occurrences used to be linked only through the Type they belong to, which resulted in a proliferation of different Types. If for examples two Occurrences had the same verses but in a different order, we used to link them to two different Types whereas now we can link the common verses individually and stick to one Type representing both. 

If on an Occurrence detail page (on which, see below) you see a little link icon next to a verse, this means this verse is to be found in other Occurrences as well. When you click on the verse in question, a so-called verse detail page opens.

For example, upon clicking on the first verse of this Occurrence you get the following information: 

  • In how many Occurrences is this one verse to be found? 
  • In which Occurrences is it to be found? 
    • [ID number] followed by Incipit
    • manuscript
    • location in manuscript 
  • What does this verse look like in each Occurrence?
    Small differences may (and in most cases: will) exist. Hence verse variants! 
  • How many verses does each Occurrence count in total?
  • Where exactly in each Occurrence is this verse to be found? 
    In some Occurrences, it may the first verse whereas in others it may be the last.

Unfortunately, we are currently unable to create subgroups within a larger group of verse variants. Therefore, we decided to be inclusive and keep as many verses together as possible. One day we hope to add some kind of hierarchy to existing groups. Please do get in touch should you spot a verse that we missed and we will gladly add it to the relevant Verse variant page. 

Warning! Verse variant pages do not have permalinks so please refrain from including them in your communication. We constantly add new Occurrences and link it to existing Occurrences, which makes these pages very unstable. Also, some notoriously complicated cases like the "ὥσπερ ξένοι" epigram(s) (on which see for example Boeten & Janse 2018) have yet to be revised. Refer to a relevant Occurrence page instead. 

Type

A link to the relevant Type detail page.

Text source

Indicates the source on which we relied to give the text.

  • If more than one source is available, preference is given to the most reliable publication.
  • If the text source is "DBBE", this means that we have established or at least checked the text ourselves.

You can click on it to open the source's detail page.  

Text status

Indicates the certainty with which we can establish the text. There are three options: 

  • Completely known:
    We know the text in its entirety. Yay!
  • Partially unknown:
    Incomplete Occurrences, for example epigrams for which the catalogue only gives an incipit.
    Please do get in touch if you have any information that can help us complete a text like this. 
  • Completely unkown:
    Occurrences of which we know they exist, but we have no acces to them whatsoever. 
    Again, do get in touch if you have any information that you want to share with us.

Date

Based on the most recent or most authoritative publication. As explained above, in order to optimise the searchability of our database we had no other option but to convert widely used expressions to specific date intervals.
Please note that the date of the Occurrence can differ from the date of its manuscript.

Manuscript

The manuscript in which the Occurrence is to be found.
You can click on it to open the Manuscript detail page, where all Occurrences found in this manuscript are listed.

Place in Manuscript

Ideally a precise folio number or else a more general indication of where in the manuscript the Occurrence is to be found.

Paleographical information

Indications on script, colour of ink, or other paleographical features.

Contextual information

In the literal sense of "con-text": surrounding texts, whenever relevant.

Person(s)

Patrons and Scribes. Often (yet not always!) the patron and / or scribe of an Occurrence will be the same as that of its manuscript.

Metre(s)

The metre or metres in which the Occurrence is written. The options are: 

Please note that in the old database it was not possible to assign more than one metre to an Occurrence, which is why some might still have simply "Mixture" as metre. We are working hard to fix this!

Genre(s)

Our labels refer to the actor / agent that occupies the central role in the communicative situation established in the epigram. For this, see also our Help page.

Subject(s)

The main subject of the poem. Often a saint or the author of the book. Provided to enable thematic searches.

Comment

Other information that may be of relevance.

Image source(s)

Link(s) to an image of the Occurrence in an online often freely accessible repository. Unfortunately, not all of them are permalinks and thus might be failing due to having changed since we last updated them. We are working hard to fix this! Also, our team obviously made use of many more images, which unfortunately cannot be published here due to copyright restrictions.

Bibliography (other than Text source)

  • Primary refers to those publications containing (part of) the text under discussion.
  • Secondary refers to all relevant publications commenting on the Occurrence, but not containing Greek text itself.
  • Bibliography category to be determined refers to all publications that had not been assigned a category in the old database. Please be patient with us while we try to fix this.

Number of verses

Sometimes, we know that an Occurrence counts more verses than we for whatever reason currently have access to.
For more information, see "Text status" above.

Related occurrence(s)

Any Occurrence that has at least one verse in common with this Occurrence. See also "Verse variants" above.

  • The ID number of the related Occurrence followed by the incipit of the related Occurrence.
    You can click on it to open the related Occurrence's detail page.
  • The manuscript in which the related Occurrence is to be found followed by a folio number (if known)
    You can click on it to open the manuscript's detail page. 
  • Between brackets, the number of verses of the related Occurrence.
  • Between brackets, the number of common verses followed by the total number of verses of the initial Occurrence.

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to anyone who has provided us with information on this record and of course to all DBBE team members who worked on it.
Please note that we were not able to retrieve from the old database precisely who did what. If you come across a record that for whatever reason you think should mention you, please do get in touch.

Permalink

All Occurrences have been assigned a unique DBBE identifier. Please include in your communication this identifier as well as the exact date on which you consulted an Occurrence. Whether or not you include the permalink as well is up to you. More information and examples are to be found on our general Help page.

The Type detail pages

DBBE identifier

All Types have been assigned a unique DBBE identifier. Please include in your communication this identifier as well as the exact date on which you consulted a Type. Whether or not you include the permalink as well is up to you. More information and examples are to be found on our general Help page.

Text

See also methodologies and practices:

When a critical text is available, we adopt it as the text source of our Type. Otherwise, we offer a normalised text of a representative Occurrence and refer to a list of related Occurrences for the peculiarities of the epigram transmission in each manuscript.

A practical tip for those of you wanting to copy the text of our Types:
Make sure to "paste without formatting" when using Google Doc or "paste as unformatted text" when using Word. Oh, and don't forget to cite us.

Warning! Having linked Occurrences through common verses (on which, see above), we are yet to revise our Types. Chances are that quite a few Types will have become redundant and thus will disappear shortly.

Title

Mostly in Greek but sometimes in Latin.

Text status

Indicates the certainty with which we can establish the text. As with Occurrences, there are three options: 

Editorial status

Ideally we give a critical text but this is far from always the case. 

Genre(s)

Our labels refer to the actor / agent that occupies the central role in the communicative situation established in the epigram. For this classification, see also our Help page.

Person(s)

Currently the only persons related to Types are poets.

Metre(s)

The metre or metres in which the Type is written. The options are: 

Please note that in the old database it was not possible to assign more than one metre to a Type, which is why some might still have simply "Mixture" as metre. We are working hard to fix this!

Subject(s)

The main subject of the poem. Often a saint or the author of the book. Provided to enable thematic searches.

Tag(s)

More refined than "subject" and rather referring to recurring motifs, such as . Meant to enable specific thematic searches.
We are well aware of the fact that a lot of work still needs to be done on these tags! Please do get in touch should you wish to help.

Critical Notes

Although we do not pretend our Types to be full critical editions, on occassion we do include critical notes.

Translation(s)

We do not translate the Types ourselves but whenever available we do provide existing translations, both in modern languages and in Latin.

Comment

Other information that may be of relevance.

Bibliography (other than Text source)

  • Primary refers to those publications containing (part of) the text under discussion.
  • Secondary refers to all relevant publications commenting on the Type, but not containing Greek text itself.
  • Bibliography category to be determined refers to all publications that had not been assigned a category in the old database. Please be patient with us while we try to fix this.

Number of Verses

Sometimes, we know that a Type counts more verses than we for whatever reason currently have access to.
For more information, see "Text status" above.

Occurrences

All Occurrences linked to the Type in question. 

Warning! Please do not rely on this information blindly. Having linked Occurrences through commons verses (on which, see above), we are yet to revise our Types. Chances are that not enough Occurrences are listed on the Type detail page. 

Related Types

Alle other Types related to the Type in question. As for how precisely these Types are related, the options are:

  • Variant:
    • other metre
    • other subject
    • other wordings
    • permutation of words
  • Same cycle:
    Different Types found often together in manuscripts. 
  • Unknown

Unfortunately, due to a flaw in the old database we had no other choice but to set the exact nature of the relation between most Types to "unknown". Also, as explained above, we are yet to revise our Types at which point we might rethink these categories.

Warning! Please do not rely on this information blindly. As explained above, chances are that quite a few Types will have become redundant and thus will disappear shortly not only from this list but altogether. In addition, the categories "Variant: other wordings" and "Variant: permutation of words" might become redundant once we are able to split verse variant groups into smaller subgroups. We will keep you posted! 

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to anyone who has provided us with information on this record and of course to all DBBE team members who worked on it.
Please note that we were not able to retrieve from the old database precisely who did what. If you come across a record that for whatever reason you think should mention you, please do get in touch.

Identification

Whenever possible, we indicate where else our Types are to be found:

Permalink

All Types have been assigned a unique DBBE identifier. Please include in your communication this identifier as well as the exact date on which you consulted a Type. Whether or not you include the permalink as well is up to you. More information and examples are to be found on our Help page.

The Manuscript detail pages

Identification

Some minor exceptions aside, DBBE follows the system used by Pinakes.

For example: https://dbbe.ugent.be/manuscripts/15404

  • City: "Paris"
  • Library: "BnF"
  • Collection: "suppl. gr."
  • Shelfmark number: "1263"

Whenever possible, we have included the Diktyon number which directs to the corresponding page in Pinakes.

Content

As explained above, we are using a parent-child system to describe the content of our manuscripts based loosely on the generic epithets used by TLG. They are meant to give a very general idea of what a manuscript contains. For a more granular search of manuscripts according to the works they contain, we happily refer to Pinakes.

Well known authors have been dedicated a separate category, such as Gregorios of Nazianzos or Ioannes of Damascus both within the overarching category "Theologica". Much to our regret, these categories have not been linked yet to the corresponding persons in our database. As a result, these manuscripts do not show up on the detail pages of Gregorios of Nazianzos or Ioannes of Damascus respectively. If all goes well, this should be fixed early 2020.

Date

Anything from an exact date to one or more centuries.

We do not date manuscripts ourselves but rely on secondary sources, Pinakes as well as others.

As explained above, we work work with fuzzy date intervals to account for inexact dates.

Scribe

Whenever possible, we refer to publications where more information regarding this scribe is to be found including:

Patron

Variously indicated in our sources as commissioner, dedicatee, sponsor, etc. Since it is very difficult to distinguish between these roles, we decided to consider them all as patrons. Whoever provided the funds and / or took the initiative to produce the manuscript is thus considered a patron. 

Origin

Whenever available and as detailed as possible.

The Person detail pages

Please bear in mind that persons are not our core business. Compared to Occurrences and Types, the information we provide here is much more succint and drawn from secondary sources only. 

Name

As explained above, behind the scenes all names are split up into different components all of which are shown together. 

(Self) designation

See above.

Date

We try to be as precise as possible.

  • In case of Eirene Doukaina we know what year she was born (1066) and even the exact date she died (19/02/1138).
  • In case of Meletios son of Neilos we only know he lived in the 13th century.

As explained above, we work work with fuzzy date intervals to account for inexact dates.

Attested dates and intervals

We also try to be as objective as possible, which is why we give attested dates and intervals whenever known. 

In case of Leon for example, we know that he is attested in the year 1330 but we do not automatically infer from this that he lived in the 14th century. Unfortunately this means that no date is shown next to Leon's name when searching for him through the Persons search page, where only birth and death dates are included, which admittedly is rather inconvenient.

Identification

Whenever possible, we refer to publications where more information regarding this person is found:

Occurrences / Types / Manuscripts

Any other record related to the person in question:

  • Occurrences this person is related to as scribe or patron
  • Types this person is related to as poet
  • Manuscripts this person is related to as scribe, patron or yet "something else"

Warning! Please do not rely on this information blindly. 

Currently, there might be both too many and too few persons in our database. 

On the one hand, we suspect there to be quite a few duplicates. For example, two persons are referred to as "Meletios son of Neilos" both from the 13th century:

Chances are that in fact we are dealing here with one and the same person. Until the matter is investigated properly however, we cannot safely merge these two records. 

On the other hand, we suspect there to be quite a few persons mentioned in Occurrences and Types that so far have gone unnoticed. 

Should you in one way or another be able to help us identifying persons more accurately, please do get in touch. 

Bibliography

Publications where more information regarding this person is found, apart from those used as identifiers.

The Bibliography detail pages

A full bibliographical reference followed by a list of all records related to the publication in question, all of which direct you to the relevant detail page upon clicking:

  • Occurrences
  • Types
  • Translations of Types
  • Manuscripts
  • Persons

For an example, click here.