Baret's <em>Alvearies</em>: Challenges for the Scholar

Abstract

John Baret (died 1580) was a Latin teacher in Cambridge. When asked to write a supplement to Thomas Elyot's English-Latin dictionary (1538) he employed several of his former pupils in the task of seeking new quotations. He then decided to turn it into a new dictionary, adding, with the help of Thomas Chaloner and M. Claudius (Claud Holyband?), French equivalents. The resulting dictionaries, The Alvearie, or Triple dictionarie (1573) and The Alvearie or quadruple dictionarie (1580), were hugely successful in England. These dictionaries owe their importance for the history of lexicography to their organization and indexes. Baret based his work on the French-Latin dictionaries of Robert Estienne, both for the Latin and for the French. Through his numbering system he succeeded in transforming his English-Latin-French dictionary into a multi-directional work: Latin-French, Latin-English, French-English, etc. I am particularly interested in the analysis of these dictionaries for the history of Western culture during the Renaissance. In this paper I shall describe the organization of the database for optimal use in this regard. The necessary distinctive units include proper names, literary and proverbial examples and historical references.