The following sources provide overviews of ideas, people, and events in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.  When using an article in an encyclopedia or handbook, always check the bibliography for further reading at the end of the article.  It will provide a selective list of the books, articles, and, sometimes, Web resources considered to be the most up-to-date and reliable. This is a good start for your research as well as a good corrective later on, providing a broader perspective than your research on one specific topic.

Use the Tripod Catalog to look for relevant books owned by Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore.

The following subject searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find relevant materials and then using the subject headings assigned to those materials to find more material.

          cities and towns ancient   [Subject Search]
          cities and towns medieval [Subject Search]

          (riot* or uprising*) and (ancient or antiqu*) [keyword search]

Tripod - For locating books, journals, and other materials held in the Tri-College libraries. Delivery within the trico usually arrive in one or two days. Use "Request" or "Get" option. You can mark and then email or print records for multiple items.

WorldCat - An important place to look for many materials not owned by the Tri-College Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 49 million records describing items owned by libraries around the world. Many of these items are available to you though interlibrary loan.

Interlibrary Loan and E-ZBorrow - Request items that are not available in Tripod on this page. Note that PALCI E-Z Borrow provides only books while Interlibrary Loan (ILL) makes journal articles as well as books, reports, and documents available. PALCI takes around three to five days to deliver your requested books, and ILL may take up to 10 days.

Dissertations

Doctoral students go through an exhaustive literature search when writing their dissertations. They also tend to work on new questions, sometimes ones that have received very little attention from scholars before. You can sometimes obtain these dissertations and benefit from all the bibliographic treasures and new ideas.

Check Dissertation Abstracts Online to identify dissertations on your topic. Then request them through the Interlibrary Loan page. Some dissertations are not available in multiple copies and cannot be loaned.

Journal articles and similar periodical publications provide focused, often recent, information on historical research. The following indexes are the best ways to find journal articles.

Using Searches in Tripod and WorldCat

You can search in Tripod and WorldCat to find some primary sources. If you are interested in the works of a particular author, enter his or her name in an author search. You can also use the subject word Sources in combination with other subject word:

Keyword Search-- sources and emperor* and rom*= 107 records including

TITLE Readings in Late Antiquity : a sourcebook / edited
by Michael Maas.
PUBLISHER London ; New York : Routledge, 2000.
DESCRIPT 375 p. ; 23 cm.
LOCATION
H Magill 


TITLE Roman Italy, 338BC-AD 200 : a sourcebook / edited
by Kathryn Lomas.
PUBLISHER London : UCL Press, 1996.
DESCRIPT  274 p. ; 24 cm.
LOCATION
B Carpenter

Series In Translation

The following series publish English translations of important Latin texts from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.  There you will find letters, tracts, and histories by major authors including Jerome and Gregory the Great.

Fathers of the Church (Catholic University Press)

Manchester Medieval Sources Series

Mediaeval Sources in Translation (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies)

Translated Texts for Historians (Liverpool University Press)

Collections of Writings in Latin

Library of Latin Texts
Includes many ancient and medieval texts as well as the complete works of authors including Ambrose and Gregory the Great.  Editions in many cases come from the Corpus Christianorum series.

Patrologia Latina
Jacques-Paul Migne compiled this huge set in the midnineteenth century. It reproduces the texts of the Church Fathers and later important works through 1216, the death of Pope Innocent III.

Examples of Texts Concerning Riots and Other Disturbances

See of Peter.
A collection of English translations about the early Papacy along with historians' explanations.  See the section on Damasus (pp. 595-696) for contemporary comments on the "bloody fracas" in 366 following his election as pope.

Ambrose, Saint, Bishop of Milan.  Political Letters and Speeches.   On order for Haverford
Translated by J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
English translation of Ambrose's letter including the one in which he finds fault with Theodosius for the massacre at Thessalonica in 387.

Jews and the Crusaders: the Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades.
English translations of  texts dealing in part with the persecutions of Jews in Germany surrounding the First Crusade.