About

Website

This site in its entirety has been moved to the University of Siena, where it will remain an ongoing project under the direction of Professors Francesco Stella and Elisabetta Bartoli. The new site is available at https://epistolae.unisi.it.

This site was originally developed at the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (formerly the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning) and has been archived by the Columbia University libraries where it remains available. In addition to the archived site, archived and downloadable versions of the biographies and letters may be accessed through the Libraries' Academic Commons repository.

Project

The original version of Epistolæ is a collection of medieval Latin letters to and from women, dating from the 4th to the 13th centuries. Presented in their original Latin as well as in English translation, the letters are organized by the name and biography of the women writers or recipients. Biographical sketches of the women, descriptions of the subject matter of the letters, and the historical context of the correspondence are included where available.

The letters were originally collected and translated by Professor Joan Ferrante and her colleagues, mainly from printed sources. The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (formerly the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning) has collaborated with Professor Ferrante to develop a free, online repository of the collection.

A few notes for readers not familiar with medieval letters: it was common practice for those women and men who engaged in correspondence to dictate their letters to secretaries who not only copied them but sometimes edited them before sending them, and letters were copied and collected by recipients as well as by senders. One can not, therefore, assume that the words are precisely those of the sender, but in general, unless an intentional deception was involved, they represent the views or intentions of the senders.

Names can be spelled in various ways; we attempt to give the most common variations.

Biblical references may not correspond to the text the reader is familiar with. Usually they refer to the Vulgate, but some writers cite other versions, other writers give an approximation as if it were an exact quotation.

Latin texts may be taken from older editions because of copyrights, but most of them do not differ substantially from later editions.