Welcome to
The Digital Liber pharetrae Project

This website provides Open Access research materials from the Pseudo-Bonaventure Liber pharetrae (i.e. Pharetra), a Latin florilegium compiled at Paris in the mid-13th century that has been attributed to Guibert de Tournai, OFM; Guillaume de Fourmenterie, OFM; William of Gloucester, OFM; and Albert de Cologne, OP (Albertus Magnus).

The project provides a revised edition of the public domain version published by Adolphe C. Peltier in his Opera omnia Bonaventurae, tom.7 (Paris, 1866), pp.5-231, which contains a total of 3589 quotations ("arrows") from the Liber pharetrae ("Book of the quiver"), divided into four books:

Liber 1: "De personarum varietate"
Liber 2: "De principalium vitiorum et virtutum multiplicitate"
Liber 3: "De periculosis"
Liber 4: "De gratiosis"

Peltier's text was reprinted from previous editions, so the manuscript exemplar is unknown, but it is probably one of the 87 known surviving manuscripts. After comparing the first lemma from Peltier's edition to the corresponding section in the earliest dated manuscript copy in Salzburg, Domstift St. Peter, MS a.IV.34, ff.1r-221r (1261), which are virtually identical, I have decided against producing an edition based on that manuscript to supplant Peltier's edition for this website.

Guibert de Tournai, from a collection of his sermons in Auxerre, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS lat. 41, fol.1ra (late 13th century)
Reproduced with permission of the Directrice de la Bibliothèque Municipale d'Auxerre

Most of the original sources have been identified and cited in each quotation's PDF source document (FONS), and in some cases an intermediate source has also been determined (FONTES). In most cases the standard modern edition of the source has been cited, and the corresponding passage from that edition is provided in a parallel column for ease of comparison. But when a modern edition is lacking, the citation is to an early printed version or, in the case of quotations from John Chrysostom's homilies on the Gospel of John or Chrysostom's homilies on Matthew, to an early manuscript exemplar of the original source.

Since August 2019, this Open Access digital transcription has also been accessible through the Scholastic Commentaries and Texts Archive (SCTA) at Loyola Univerity Maryland: http://scta.info/resource/UUyf3f.

Since September 2019, this digital revised edition of Peltier's edition of the Liber pharetrae has been searchable via the Janus Intertextuality Search Engine, developed in 2007-8 for the The Electronic Manipulus florum Project. Users of Janus have the option of searching either the critical edition of the Manipulus, the revised edition of the Pharetra, or both of these florilegia simultaneously in conducting intertextuality searches. For more information on Janus, please visit the Janus page on the Manipulus florum Project website.

This digital resource has benefited from multiple contributors, including Googlebooks provision of Peltier's edition, Ross Arthur's advice and assistance with OCR software in 2014, and the contributions of Veronica Parkes and Aaron Bolarinho, WLU student research assistants who helped prepare the editions of Books 2-4 during the summer of 2015, with funding from an internal research grant. Finally, many thanks are also due to Dr. Frank Tompa and Dr. Andrew Kane of the David Cheriton School of Computer Science (University of Waterloo) for their assistance in Summer 2019 in making this text searchable through the Janus search engine.


©2014-23
Chris L. Nighman
History Department, Wilfrid Laurier University


The editor gratefully acknowledges that financial support for this project has been provided in the form of a Category A Research Grant
partly funded by WLU Operating funds and partly by a General Research Grant awarded to WLU by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).