It seems to be obligatory for a web site to have a page of links, but often these pages are both out of date and overwhelmingly long. I have spent a little time, over the last few weeks, trolling around looking for those web sites that seem exceptionally useful to our field. Here are some highlights.
First and foremost, there is the site Philosophia Medii Aevi, run out of the University of Salento by Loris Sturlese and Irene Zavattero. This is an extremely impressive effort, going back years now, to do essentially what In medias aims to do: publicize activities in our field. It is kept impressively up to date, and I will be mining it for future posts.
Second, and not far behind, are Jean-Luc Solère’s herculean efforts, under the auspices of the SIEPM, to collect electronic texts, particularly pdfs of Renaissance editions: http://capricorn.bc.edu/siepm/. Other sites – in particular Dana Sutton’s Bibliography of Neo-Latin Texts – attempt to cover similar territory, but Solère concentrates exclusively on philosophical texts, and has converted everything to pdfs and then downloaded them to the Boston College server, meaning that the URL won’t be moved at some librarian’s whim. The site is a bit labyrinthine – it takes some exploring to figure out where things are – but there is an amazing amount here. Jean-Luc has clearly put a great deal of work into this, and I am sure he would welcome information about texts he is missing, broken links, etc.
Third, as anyone specializing in Arabic material doubtless knows already, there is a fairly miraculous site that gathers together a great deal of useful and not readily accessible material pertaining to Islamic philosophy: http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ . This includes both Arabic texts and English translations, and much more too. The site, created by Muhammad Hozien, seems to be no longer active, but there is enough there to make it useful for a long time to come.
Fourth, another site so impressive that it’s hard to believe it exists is Maarten van der Heijden and Bert Roest’s Catalogue of Franciscan Authors, running from the 13th to the 18th Century. This provides detailed information on hundreds of figures, including not just brief biographies but also lists of editions, manuscripts, and secondary literature. This site is being lovingly kept up to date.
Fifth, although I am not sure it belongs in the same league as these other sites, there is my site Provisionalia, which attempts to provide brief essential information about every later medieval scholastic author who has been the subject of any scholarly research. My particular hope is to provide information about what works are extant for each given author, what editions are available, and what editions are in progress. The site will continue to be useful, though, only if scholars continue to send me information about editorial efforts that are in progress.
In medias PHIL 