CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
Projects
Sign inStart a book
nydus/Introduction to the Study of HistoryPublic
Page 365 of 400
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY

  1. [98] J. P. Waltzing, Recueil général des inscriptions latines (Louvain, 1892, 8vo), p. 41.
  2. [99] Ibid. When the geographical order is adopted, a difficulty arises from the fact that the origin of certain documents is unknown; many inscriptions preserved in museums have been brought there no one knows whence. The difficulty is analogous to that which results, for chronological regesta, from documents without date.
  3. [100] Here the only difficulty arises in the case of documents whose incipit has been lost. In the eighteenth century Séguier devoted a great part of his life to the construction of a catalogue, in the alphabetical order of the incipit, of the Latin inscriptions, to the number of 50,000, which had at that time been published: he searched through some twelve thousand works. This vast compilation has remained unpublished and useless. Before undertaking work of such magnitude it is well to make sure that it is on a rational plan, and that the labour—the hard and thankless labour—will not be wasted.
  4. [101] See G. Waitz, Ueber die Herausgabe und Bearbeitung von Regesten, in the Historische Zeitschrift, xl. (1878), pp. 280-95.
  5. [102] In the absence of a predetermined logical order, and when the chronological order is not suitable, it is sometimes an advantage to provisionally group the documents (that is, the slips) in the alphabetical order of the words chosen as headings (Schlagwörter). This is what is called the "dictionary system."
  6. [103] See Langlois, Manuel de bibliographie historique, i. p. 88.
365