In collaboration with prof. Chiara Faraggiana of the Dipartimento di Storie e Metodi per la Conservazione dei Beni Culturali of the University of Bologna and the Patristische Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, the research program is developing a database for the traditions of the Apophthehmata Patrum and related texts from the early monastic tradition. The aim is to make available to the scholarly world a comprehensive database and a strong research instrument for the textual transmission of the Apophthegmata Patrum in a wide sense, that is the sayings by and stories about early monastic figures preserved in a huge variety of collections in the various languages of Christian Antiquity. In the database all edited versions of the apophthegmata patrum as well as all versions preserved in manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Georgian, Armenian, Arabic, Ethiopic and Old Slavonic will be registered. The database will include basic information about the most important manuscripts in the above mentioned languages, the actual text or the incipits of the sayings in the original language and/or translation, including, where appropriate, titles, prologues, epilogues and other texts important for the textual transmission of the sayings.
The database will also include extensive cross references for individual sayings and other texts, structures of single manuscripts, as well as established reference series and collections. The database will further include scholarly comments and notes on all levels of the texts as well as essential bibliographical information. Through a detailed systematic treatment of the material the database will make it possible to study all kinds of relations, developments in language and in organization, as well as modes of translation and cultural transfer. Attempts will also be made to register attestations to the apophthegmata in other ancient Christian texts, and to index names and important concepts.
The architecture of the database and the methods to be used for registration, storage and retrieval as well as standard searches and presentations is being developed at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University by the research program ”Early monasticism and Classical Paideia” in collaboration with its partners. Due to the long tradition of research on the textual legacy of early monasticism at the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen the material housed at the academy and the unedited result of the research done at the Academy by prof. Faraggiana constitutes the main source of material to be put into the database. The material to be registered into the database is provided by all partners of the database project. Of major importance for the development and enrichment of the database are the inclusion of the results of the works by the great scholars of last century, in particular Wilhelm Bousset, René Draguet, Jean-Claude Guy, Lucien Regnault, Michel van Esbroek and Jean-Marie Sauget.
All rights of invention and copyright protected by law will be respected in relation to edited as well as unedited material and all material made available in the database will be linked to information about the scholar contributing the material as well as the analysis. For the database the research program actively seeks the cooperation with institutes and scholars engaged in the study of the textual transmission of early monastic florilegia. For further information about the database project and interest in cooperation please contact the director of the research program, Professor Samuel Rubenson.