Encyclopedia

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An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either from all branches or from a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles with one article on each subject covered. The articles on subjects in an encyclopedia are usually accessed alphabetically by article name and can be contained in one volume or many volumes, depending on the amount of material included. A subject encyclopedia is a similar work, on a single field of activity or a single subject.

The phrase enkyklios paedia (ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία) was used by Plutarch and the Latin word encyclopaedia came from him. The first work titled in this way was the Encyclopedia orbisque doctrinarum, hoc est omnium artium, scientiarum, ipsius philosophiae index ac divisio written by Bavarian Renaissance humanist historian and philologist Johannes Aventinus in 1517. Johann Georg Turmair, known by the pen name Johannes Aventinus or Aventin (Latin for "John of Abensberg"), authored the 1523 Annals of Bavaria, a valuable record of the early history of Germany.

History

Marcus Terentius Varro (116 BC – 27 BC) was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. His Nine Books of Disciplines became a model for later encyclopedists, especially Pliny the Elder. Varro decided to focus on identifying nine of these arts: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, musical theory, medicine, and architecture. Using Varro's list, subsequent writers defined the seven classical "liberal arts of the medieval schools".

The earliest encyclopedic work to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, a Roman statesman living in the 1st century AD. He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural history, architecture, medicine, geography, geology, and all aspects of the world around him. He stated in the preface that he had compiled 20,000 facts from 2000 works by over 200 authors, and added many others from his own experience. The work was published around AD 77–79, although he probably never finished proofing the work before his death in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

The most popular encyclopedia of the Carolingian Age was the De universo or De rerum naturis by Rabanus Maurus (c. 780 – 4 February 856), written about 830, which was based on the Etymologiae. Maurus, born in Mainz, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, theologian, poet, encyclopedist and military writer who became archbishop of Mainz in East Francia. A runic alphabet recorded in a treatise called De Inventione Litterarum has been ascribed to Rabanus. Wilhelm Grimm discussed these runes in 1821.

Many encyclopedic works were written during the 12th and 13th centuries. Among them was Hortus Deliciarum (1167–1185) by Herrad von Landsberg, which is thought to be the first encyclopedia written by a woman. She was trained as a nun by Abbess Richlint, who was sent by Roman-German Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa from the Bergen monastery near Neuburg to Odilienberg. As Richlint's successor, Herrad was Abbess of the Hohenburg monastery on the Odilienberg from 1167 to 1195 and achieved great fame as the author and illustrator of the Hortus Deliciarum ("Garden of Delights"), created around 1180.

In 1493, the Nuremberg Chronicle was produced, containing hundreds of illustrations, of historical figures, events and geographical places. Written as an encyclopedic chronicle, it remains one of the best-documented early printed books—an incunabulum—and one of the first to successfully integrate illustrations and text. Illustrations depicted many never before illustrated major cities in Europe and the Near East. 645 original woodcuts were used for the illustrations

The German-language Conversations-Lexikon was published at Leipzig from 1796 to 1808, in 6 volumes. Paralleling other 18th century encyclopedias, its scope was expanded beyond that of earlier publications, in an effort at comprehensiveness. It was, however, intended not for scholarly use but to provide results of research and discovery in a simple and popular form without extensive detail. This format, a contrast to the Encyclopædia Britannica, was widely imitated by later 19th century encyclopedias in Britain, the United States, France, Spain, Italy and other countries. Of the influential late-18th century and early-19th century encyclopedias, the Conversations-Lexikon is perhaps most similar in form to today's encyclopedias.

External links

Encyclopedias