In a great many theological works written (in Latin) from the early modern period down into the twentieth century, there is a casual assumption that readers will understand references to an abbreviated form of an author’s name, plus a volume and page number. If you aren’t part of the assumed audience—the people who just “know”—there won’t be anything like a list of abbreviations or bibliography of works cited to help you out.
For example, a colleague recently asked me to help him translate a (rather racy!) passage from an 1835 edition of St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Theologia moralis, where I encountered an in-text citation that looked like this:
Negant Sanch. l. 9. D. 17. n. 5 et Boss. c. 7. n. 175 et 193. cum Fill. ac Perez …. Sed verius affirmant Spor. de Matrim. num. 498. Tamb. l. 7. c. 3. §5. num. 33. et Diana. p. 67. tr. 7. R. 7. cum Fagund.
That means that some guys named “Sanch., Boss., Fill., and Perez” said “No” to the question under discussion, whereas some guys named “Spor., Tamb., Diana., and Fagund.” said “Yes,” and that, in St. Alphonsus’s view, “more truly” (verius). But who are the writers, and what are the works, that St. Alphonsus is referring to?
Hunting for answers in the venerable 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, I noticed that the entry for one of these theologians cited “Hurter Nomenclator,” and that led me to the following work, which has been made freely accessible at the Hathi Trust Digital Library:
Hugo Hurter (1832–1914), Nomenclator literarius recentioris theologiae catholicae theologos exhibens qui inde a Concilio tridentino floruerunt aetate, natione, disciplinis distinctos, 2nd edn, 4 vols. (Oeniponte [Innsbruck]: Libraria academica Wagneriana, 1892–99).
(“A literary name-identifier for more recent Catholic theology, showing the names of theologians who flourished after the Council of Trent, divided by era, nation, and discipline.”)
- Vol. 1 (1892): Theologiae Catholicae seculum primum post celebratum Concilium Tridentinum, ab anno 1564–1663 [Hathi Trust]
- Vol. 2 (1893): Theologiae Catholicae seculum secundum post celebratum Concilium Tridentinum, ab anno 1664–1763 [Hathi Trust]
- Vol. 3 (1895): Theologiae Catholicae seculum tertium post celebratum Concilium Tridentinum, ab anno 1764–1894 [Hathi Trust]
- Vol. 4 (1899): Theologia Catholica tempore Medii Aevi, ab anno 1109–1563 [Hathi Trust] [index of names for all 4 volumes]
(The fourth volume goes back in time to the Middle Ages.)
There were subsequent third editions of a couple of these volumes, and even a fourth edition of one of them, but those aren’t accessible online.
Hurter covers everybody, but there’s not much on offer in the way of “immediate gratification.” For example, when I looked up “Boss.,” I found fourteen possible names, scattered across all four volumes. But I worked out a fairly quick way of sorting between them. I looked in the (very detailed) table of contents of each volume and checked to see where the page number next to each name fell in the various sub-disciplines of “Theology.”
It didn’t take long to notice that the page number for “Bossio Jo. Barn. it (1665) II, 288” fell in a section of volume 2 devoted to the topic at hand, namely, “Theologia moralis.” Turning to that section, it was only a matter of minutes to work out that St. Alphonsus had to be referring to Giovanni Angelo Bossi (1590–1665) and to his treatise De effectibus contractus matrimonii (1655).
I don’t know how I would have worked that out without Hurter’s Nomenclator!
What I’ll probably do is print out a booklet containing the union index of names from volume 4 and the tables of contents from all four volumes, to speed up the name-hunting process.
Update (April 13, 2024)
I’ve now created a permanent page for this resource under “Other Useful Reference Resources” in the navigation menu. And to make it easier for myself others to use it, I’ve also created, and made accessible for download, two pdf files, one with the whole union index from volume 4, and the other with the tables of contents from all four volumes:
Medieval and Anglican Liturgy 