Glossary of Later Latin - needed as a supplement for the OLDv2 for Latin and many Greek resources

This is an expanded version of a message that I sent to the suggestion e-mail at Logos. Please express your support if you're interested too.

If you are interested in understanding the Bible, presumably you are also interested in knowing how the Early Christians understood its texts and the faith taught by the Apostles. If for this reason and/or for other reasons, you are interested in the Early Church Fathers - even if just the Greek Fathers - and/or the Vulgate, you would do well to learn Latin. Ancient Latin translations of the Bible and the Greek Fathers supply some of what's missing in the extant Greek manuscripts of those works. Sometimes more remains of a Greek Father's writings in Latin translation than in Greek. Then there's Augustine, and Aquinas... Plus there's all the Latin in the copious footnotes in the Patrologia Graeca.

So, if you want to learn post-classical ("Later" or "Patristic") Latin, and agree that the fastest way to learn ancient languages well is by using the functionality of Logos/Verbum, you could start to look into it but then encounter a set of facts that constitute a big enough problem. The smaller Latin dictionaries are nowhere near adequate for the task. Lewis and Short is fairly complete in coverage, but written in a version of English that is now to a degree archaic, and even before that happened, it was well known to need many corrections and additions; and on top of that, it doesn't give complete definitions like today's best dictionaries do. These things can slow a student right down, and we generally do not have that kind of time. There's a wonderful Latin Lexicon of St. Thomas Aquinas in Verbum/Logos, but it won't cover enough patristic vocabulary, and it doesn't even cover all the vocabulary or usage in Aquinas. There's the huge Oxford Latin Dictionary (2nd ed.) here, which will have most of the vocabulary and most of the meanings that you'd need properly defined in current English and ordered, but its official coverage ends intentionally just before early Christian Latin texts began. There's Albert Blaise's wonderful Dictionnnaire...des Auteurs Chrétiens - but only in French, and not in Logos/Verbum. What would be the best solution?

There's a Glossary of Later Latin by Alexander Souter (part of the OLD team) that was made as a supplement to the Oxford Latin Dictionary. It was made especially to make possible reading the Early Church Fathers and the Bible in Latin. It's about 450 pages, from OUP, 1949. That, especially if integrated or linked somehow with the OLDv2, would be a fantastic solution. It appears to cost about $30 USD in print.

What do you guys think of that?

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Simon’s Brother

If I ever get into Latin then this sounds like a possible gap for which you have identified a solution so i’d definitely would like to hear what others more learned in Latin have to say.

SineNomine

https://suggestbooks.uservoice.com/

NB.Mick

There's a Glossary of Later Latin by Alexander Souter (part of the OLD team) that was made as a supplement to the Oxford Latin Dictionary. It was made especially to make possible reading the Early Church Fathers and the Bible in Latin. It's about 450 pages, from OUP, 1949

I think it's relevant to note that Souter died in 1949, which means that in most jurisdictions, following the 70 years p.m.a. doctrine, the work will be in the Public Domain as from Jan 1, 2020 - which would help Logos produce it and price it via CP instead of paying royalties and pricing at Oxford-level, or allow interested users to make and share a Personal Book.

DMB

What do you guys think of that?

Well, hopefully I'm the exception but L&S doesn't bother me. And I have my ecllesiastical latin/greek guy for protestant ignorance (mine). The early church latin had trouble settling on common meaning ... author specific. I guess I'd need examples?

Brian Davidson

I would love to have this. OLD and Latin is one of the main things that brought me back to using Logos on a daily basis.

Thanks, SineNomine, for the link to https://suggestbooks.uservoice.com/. I have posted it there. Man, this book needs to be in Logos/Verbum.

Hi Disciple II, the following is copied and pasted from a review at A. (sorry, block quotes don't seem to be working for me): "I would never have finished my dissertation back in 1979 without Souter's Glossary. There were no really adequate dictionaries for medieval Latin, and Souter includes many terms and usages not in Lewis and Short. I just purchased a copy and have already used it several times. If you are working with patristic or early medieval ecclesiastical Latin, this is better (buy it used) than Niemeyer (later and primarily historical Latin) or Latham's Revised Medieval Latin Word List from British and Irish Sources and cheaper than Blaise, let alone titles such as the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources."

Hi Denise, I don't have an example in front of me, but please see below.

To everyone, Souter says in his preface (sorry block quoting doesn't seem to work for me right now):

"The present work was in effect begun about half a century ago when, in imitation of my dear master Mayor, I began to add words and examples to a copy of Lewis and Short. The margins of the first copy became after about five years so crowded that I had to purchase a second, which in its turn has become just as full. Into a third, interleaved, I copied a number of classical examples from Professor Mayor's annotated copies. The inclusion of more a very small fraction of all these examples was forbidden by the plan of this book, but the information which they furnish lies behind many of its brief statements.

...The staff of the Oxford Latin Dictionary, past and present, have rendered me valuable help.

...The Glossary is intended to include all known 'common' words that, according to the witness of surviving writings and documents, do not occur in the period before A.D. 180 and yet may be certainly or reasonably assigned to a date before A.D. 600."

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1073390#Comment_1073390

Thanks, SineNomine, for the link to https://suggestbooks.uservoice.com/. I have posted it there. Man, this book needs to be in Logos/Verbum.

I have voted for it. [:)]

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1073473#Comment_1073473

Thanks, SineNomine, and thanks to all who have voted or will vote for this. I hope that these votes make it possible for me and all of us to get this book in Verbum/Logos.