In Principio Online - 21 (2023)

An invaluable research tool for all those scholars and libraries interested in the writers, texts and manuscripts of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Those who are interested in the writers, texts and manuscripts of Antiquity and the Middle Ages know how difficult it is to identify a particular work encountered by chance in a manuscript, or, when studying or publishing a particular text, to make an inventory of all the manuscripts in which it appears.

The incipit or first words of a work thus remain the surest means of designating it unambiguously. In a sense, the incipit, by virtue of its invariability, is the identity card of the text. Standing apart from the diversity of attributions and titles, the incipit guarantees the presence of a particular text.

The incipit serves as a link between the text and the manuscript. The search software of In Principio enables to answer two main questions about the incipit:

- who is the author and what is the title of
 the text?

- which manuscripts contain the text?