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The theory of the operations of external criticism is now so well established, the number of specialists thoroughly versed in them is now so great in every country, that, with rare exceptions, descriptive catalogues of documents, editions, regesta, monographs, are scrutinised, dissected, and judged as soon as they appear. It is well to be warned.
We may recall, by way of illustration, the existence of a Corpus Inscriptionum Græcarum, of a Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, of a Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, the Regesta Imperii of J. F. Böhmer and his continuators, the Regesta Pontificum Romanorum of P. Jaffé and A. Potthast.
These are the people of whom we hear: "He works badly, he has the genius of inaccuracy." Their catalogues, their editions, their regesta, their monographs swarm with imperfections, and never inspire confidence; try as they may, they never attain, I do not say absolute accuracy, but any decent degree of accuracy.
II. We distinguish between the historian who classifies verified documents for the purposes of historical work, and the scholar who compiles "Regesta." By the words "Regesta" and "Corpus" we understand methodically classified collections of historical documents. In a "Corpus" documents are reproduced in extenso; in "Regesta" they are analysed and described.
One of the chief rules of the art of Corpus and regesta-making, that great art which has been carried to such perfection in the second half of the nineteenth century, is to provide these collections, whatever the grouping adopted, with a variety of tables and indexes of a kind to facilitate the use of them: incipit tables in chronological regesta which lend themselves to such treatment, indexes of names and dates in regesta arranged by order of incipit, and so on.
Epistles of Gregory VII.; Baronius's Annals; Dupin's Ecclesiastical History; Voigt, in his Hildebrand als Gregory VII.; Guizot's Lectures on Civilization; Sir James Stephens's article on Hildebrand, in Edinburgh Review; Dugdale's Monasticon; Hallam's Middle Ages; Digby's Ages of Faith; Jaffe's Regesta Pontificum Romanorum; Mignet's series of articles on La Lutte des Papes contre les Empereurs d'Allemagne; M. Villemain's Histoire de Grégoire VII.; Bowden on the Life and Times of Hildebrand; Milman's Latin Christianity; Watterich's Romanorum Pontificum ab Aequalibus Conscriptae; Platina's Lives of the Popes; Stubbs's Constitutional History; Lee's History of Clerical Celibacy; Cardinal Newman's Essays; Lecky's History of European Morals; Dr.
Critics who have been long habituated to the restoration of texts restore them with incomparable dexterity and sureness; those who devote themselves exclusively to investigations of authorship and sources have intuitions which would not occur to others less versed in this difficult and highly specialised branch; those who have spent their lives in the construction of catalogues and the compilation of regesta construct and compile them more easily, more quickly, and better than the man in the street.
But this combination is very rare, for several reasons. The first is the shortness of life; there are catalogues, editions, regesta on a great scale, the construction of which entails so much mechanical labour as to exhaust the strength of the most zealous worker.
The systematic order, or arrangement by subjects, is not to be recommended for the compilation of a Corpus or of regesta. It is always arbitrary, and leads to inevitable repetition and confusion.
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