Corpora

All of the project's searchable corpora are in this list. Some of these are still under copyright protection and thus we are unable to display their full text. However, even these copyrighted corpora are searchable. The user should refer to the print editions of these corpora for the text.

The various corpus categories ('Formulae' or 'Chartae') are indexed differently. One can search for inflected word forms in all texts. This means that 'Word Order', 'Fuzziness', 'Search Radius', and the use of wildcard characters are supported for all corpora. 'Lemma' searches, however, will return results only for the 'Formulae'. And the 'Date' search works only for 'Chartae'. See below for more details.

Word Search

The 'Word Search' searches only the Latin text of the formulae and the charters. Wildcard characters are allowed. A question mark ('?') replaces a single character while an asterisk ('*') replaces one or more characters. Both of these replace characters within a single word and not, e.g., spaces between words. So if one searches for hab* ten* poss*, all documents that contain three consecutive words, the first of which starts with hab, the second with ten, and the third with poss, would be returned. If one wishes to find these three words where other words might occur between them, then set the 'Search Radius' to a value greater than '0'.

Search-as-you-type

The suggestions returned by the 'search-as-you-type' functionality in the 'Word Search' are based on the other entries in the search form. For instance, if one selects Andecavensis under 'Corpora', the 'search-as-you-type' suggestions will be limited to the Angers Formulae. The restrictions on the various search functions mentioned above also apply here. E.g., the 'Lemma' search will only return suggested strings of lemmas from the formulae. The only parameter that has no effect on these suggestions is 'Word Order'. The suggestions will only show results in which the words occur in the same order as they are typed.

If one selects a suggested phrase before setting the other search parameters then these other parameters will have no influence on the suggestions. That can lead to cases where no results will be shown because the chosen phrase does not occur in any document that fulfills the other parameters of the search. It is thus advisable to first set the other search parameters before choosing a 'search-as-you-type' suggestion.

Lemma

The lemma search searches for the dictionary forms instead of the inflected forms of words. A lemma search for dominus would show all inflected forms of this word such as domini or Domino. It would also show all orthographic variants such as domni or Domeno. The lemma search only functions with selected corpora.

Word Order

Select this option if the order of the words as typed is important. With this option, the search string uenerabile uir would return no document that only has the words in the reverse order, i.e., uir uenerabile. 'Word Order' also works with a 'Search Radius' above '0'. For instance, searching for magnificis uiris with a 'Search Radius' of '10' words would return a document with magnificis rei puplici uiris but not one with uiris uenerabilibus adque magnificis.

Fuzziness Level

Fuzziness is a measure of how much a word can deviate from the search input value and still be considered a valid result. The numbers represent how many changes can be made to a word. E.g., 2 means that 2 letters in the word can be replaced, deleted, added or transposed. So if one were to search for regnum with the 'Fuzziness Level' set at '2' one would find the words regno and regni but also magnum ('m' replaces 'r' and 'a' replaces 'e') and legum ('l' replaces 'r' and 'n' is deleted).

'AUTO' means that the number of allowed changes depends on the length of the word: if the word is 1 or 2 letters long, no changes are allowed, 3-5 letter words allow 1 change, and longer words allow 2 changes. 'AUTO' should work best for most searches.

Search Radius

The maximum number of words between the search terms. For instance, searching for uenerabilibus uiris with a 'Search Radius' of '4' would return the phrase uenerabilibus atquae magnificis rei puplici uiris.

Issued At

The 'Issued At' search applies only to charters.

Date Search

Since formulae have no precise date information, any search that contains date information will return no formulae.

Search a Specific Date

Returns results that are either dated to this precise date or that have a date range that includes the date. For instance, a search for the year '800' will return all documents dates to '800' (e.g., 'June 17, 800') but also those where the year 800 is included their range (e.g., '769-813').

Date Plus-Minus

This determines the number of years that the date of a document can differ from the date given and still be returned as a result. If one were to search for '800 June 17' with a 'Date Plus-Minus' value of 49 years, one would find all documents that are dated to June 17 (and only June 17) for all years between 751 and 849.

Search a Date Range

A 'Date Range' search will return all documents that are dated between the 'From' and 'To' dates. If one were to search for '750 June 17' to '850 June 17', one would find documents that were dated to December 31, 777 or February 12, 813.

Exclusive

An 'Exclusive Date Range' search is a special search that allows you to look for specific dates within a range of years. For instance, an Exclusive for the date range from June 17, 800 to November 22, 813, will only find charters that are dated between June 17 and November 22 between the years 800 and 813 (e.g., August 8, 807). That means that a charter that is dated to March 5, 806 or December 24, 812 will not be returned.