CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM. - Corpus means a general collection. Many general collections of inscriptions have been made for antiquity. Of those that embrace both Christian and pagan inscriptions, the following were or are of capital importance:
Janus Gruterus, Inscriptiones antiquae totius orbis romani in corpus absolutissimum redactae cum indicibus XXV (Heidelberg 1603).
L. A. Muratori, Novus thesaurus veterum inscriptionum (4 vols., Milan 1739-42), followed by 2 vols. of Supplementum, by Sebastiano Donati (Lucca 1765).
After this date, not only did new discoveries multiply greatly, but the defects of the previous collections became ever more apparent, especially with regard to the authenticity, reliability and accuracy of the texts. After various attempts, there first came a C. I. Graecarum auctoritate et impensis Academiae Litterarum regiae Borussicae, ed. Augustus Boeckh; I and II (Berlin 1828-43); III, Ex materia collecta ab A. Boeckhio edidit Joannes Franzius (ibid. 1853); IV, Ex materia ab A. Boeckhio et I. Franzio collecta et ab hoc ex parte digesta et pertractata edidit Ernestus Curtius (ibid. 1856) and Adolphus Kirchhoff (ibid. 1859); Indices subiecit Hermannus Roehl (ibid. 1877). It is a work fully worthy of the reputation of its authors, although it exploited almost only published sources and, as far as Christian inscriptions were concerned, Kirchhoff applied too strict a hand and an intolerable boldness of conjecture. The extraordinary growth of new material and the need for countless corrections of already published texts induced the Berlin Academy to plan the edition of a new C., this time restricted only to Greece and the classical age (thus admitting only in part the oldest Christian inscriptions). Its director was Adolf Kirchhoff, assisted by other famous epigraphers such as Ulrich Köhler, Johannes Kirchner, Wilhelm Dittenberger, and it came out first in various Corpora distinct for the various regions of Greece, later merged together from 1906 (already in 1902 the great Hellenist Ulrich Wilamowitz-Moellendorff had succeeded Kirchhoff in the direction of the C.) into a single series of volumes under the title Inscriptiones Graecae editae consilio et auctoritate Academiae Regiae Borussicae (still in the course of publication): I-III (1873-97), inscriptions of Attica (formerly C. I. Atticarum, vols. I-IV); IV (1902), inscriptions of the Argolid; V (1913), inscriptions of Arcadia, Laconia and Messenia; VII (1892), inscriptions of the Megarid and Boeotia; IX (1897-1908), inscriptions of Phocis, Locris, Aetolia, Acarnania, the Ionian Islands and Thessaly; XI (1912-27), inscriptions of Delos; XII (1895-1915), islands of the Aegean; XIV (1870), inscriptions of Sicily, Italy and the rest of the West.
For Latin inscriptions there was much discussion throughout the first half of the 19th century on how to compose a C. truly meeting the needs of scholarship, until Mommsen, with his volume of the Inscriptiones regni neapoletani latinae (Leipzig 1852), showed how it should be done and who could do it. To him, therefore, the Berlin Academy of Sciences entrusted the task and the means to realize the gigantic publication that came out from 1863 onward in 15 vols., comprising all Latin inscriptions earlier than the 7th century, including the Christian ones (except vol. VI), and as far as possible also all those unpublished and never copied or preserved only in ancient manuscript copies. C. I. Latinarum consilio et auctoritate Academiae Regiae Borussicae editum: I, inscriptions earlier than the death of Caesar (Berlin 1863-1931); II (1869 and 1892), Spain; III (1873-1902), Illyricum and the East; IV (1871-1909), Pompeii; V (1872-77), Northern Italy; VI (1876-1933), Rome; VII (1873), Britain; VIII (1881-1916), Africa; IX (1883), Calabria, Apulia, Samnium, Sabina, Picenum; X (1883), Campania, Lucania, Bruttium, Sicily, Sardinia; XI (1888-1922), Aemilia, Etruria, Umbria; XII (1888), Gallia Narbonensis; XIII (1899-1933), the rest of Gaul and Germany; XIV (1887-1930), Latium; XV (1891-1899), instrumentum domesticum of Rome. The praise of the C. I. Latinarum is no longer necessary. It may be said that it represents the most gigantic and perfect work of classical philology. For the inscriptions of Italy a new edition of the C. is in progress under the care of the Unione accademica italiana: Inscriptiones Italiae (Rome 1932 ff.).
Although the Christian inscriptions were included in the volumes of the C. together with the pagan ones (only those of Spain and those of Britain were collected separately by Emil Hübner in two smaller volumes, Inscriptiones Britanniae christianae [Berlin 1876] and Inscriptiones Hispaniae christianae [ibid. 1871 and 1900]), nevertheless national collections or corpora were also made here and there, generally with greater luxury of execution, fullness of commentary, and extending the chronological limits of the C. The first was Edmond Le Blant who, following the example and encouragement of De Rossi, published the Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures au VIIIe siècle (3 vols., Paris 1865-92), a work full of learning, with extensive commentary and graphic reproductions of the inscriptions. There followed Franz Xaver Kraus, Die christlichen Inschriften der Rheinlande (2 vols., Freiburg im Breisgau 1890-94), a collection that reaches to the middle of the 13th century and gives a photograph of the texts. Then Emil Egli, Die christlichen Inschriften der Schweiz vom 4. bis 9. Jahrhundert (Zurich 1895). Recently José Vives has redone the collection of all the Inscriptiones cristianas de la España romana y visigoda, including the coins (Barcelona 1942), not with the completeness of a C. properly so called (he omits, for example, the minor fragments and all the bibliography prior to Hübner), but far surpassing Hübner's collection and with very copious indexes. S. Gsell published the Inscriptions latines de l'Algérie, I, Paris 1922, and A. Merlin the Inscriptions latines de Tunisie*, ibid. 1944.
The Christian inscriptions of Rome, not included in vol. VI of the C., were to be published separately by De Rossi, who however gave only 2 vols. of them: I, Epitaphia certam temporis notam exhibentia (Rome 1857-61) and II, Series codicum in quibus veteres inscriptiones christianae descriptae sunt ante sanctium XVI (ibid. 1888).
After the death of De Rossi the task passed to Giuseppe Gatti, who however could publish only a Supplementum to vol. I (Rome 1915); after Gatti too had died, Angelo Silvagni was put in charge, and he has so far published, in a more concise manner than De Rossi and substituting topographical order for systematic order, another 2 vols. of a new series: Nova series, I, Inscriptiones incertae originis, that is, those whose provenance is no longer known (Rome 1922); II, Coemeteria in viis Cornelia Aurelia Portuensi et Ostiensi (ibid. 1935).
A general collection of all the Christian inscriptions then known earlier than the year 1000 had been composed at the end of the 18th century by Gaetano Marini, in about 10,000 numbers; but it remained imperfect and unpublished, summarized in four codices of the Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 9071-74, of which Angelo Mai later published a small part in Scriptorum veterum novus collectio, V (Rome 1831). Recently Ernst Diehl has published a very extensive collection, Inscriptiones latinae christianae veteres, in 2 vols. with a third of indexes (Berlin 1923-31); a similar work for the Greek ones of the Western world had been prepared by Karl Wessel, but its printing was interrupted by the Second World War.
A general collection of all Greek Christian inscriptions was planned by Homolle, who in 1878 outlined its general design, determined the method and listed the collaborators in Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, 22 (1898), p. 410, and in 1905 the Archaeological Congress of Athens gave its approval and formulated grand wishes, but nothing came of it. A similar project for a kind of Greek Diehl was also presented by Fr. Guillaume Jerphanion at the VI International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Sofia in 1935 (cf. Bulletin de l'Institut archéologique bulgare, 9 [1935], p. 129) but it too remained a dead letter. As compensation, various regional Corpora arose here and there: C. Bayet, De titulis Atticae christianis antiquissimis (Paris 1878); G. Lefebvre, Recueil des inscriptions grecques-chrétiennes d'Égypte (Cairo 1907); H. Grégoire, Recueil des inscriptions grecques-chrétiennes d'Asie Mineure (Paris 1922; only those of the western shores); C. der griechisch-christlichen Inschriften von Hellas, I, 1, Isthmus-Corinthos edited by N. A. Bees (Berlin 1941). Largely collections of Christian inscriptions are also those of B. Latyschev, Inscriptiones antiquae orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini grecae et latinae (2 vols., St. Petersburg 1885-90) and vol. IV, Supplementa (ibid. 1901), and of L. Jalabert-R. Mouterde, Inscriptiones grecques et latines de la Syrie, I, Paris 1929; II, ibid. 1939; the publication continues.
Finally, Fr. Giambattista Frey published a C. i. indacorum, Recueil des inscriptions juives qui vont du IIIe siècle avant Jésus-Christ on VIIe siècle de notre ère, I, Europe (Vatican City 1936). The second volume, posthumous, which will include those of Africa and Asia, is about to be published.
The non-Latin and non-Greek inscriptions of ancient Italy were collected by A. Fabretti, C. I. Indicorum antiquioris aevi (Turin 1867-77; 1 vol. and 3 supplements); the Etruscan ones in particular by C. Paoli, C. I. Etruscarum, I, Leipzig 1893-1902. For the Semitic inscriptions a C. was undertaken by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris, with collotype reproductions of the texts: C. I. Semiticarum, part 1, Inscriptiones Phoeniciae (5 vols., 1881 ff.); part 2, Inscriptiones Aramaicae (5 vols., 1889 ff.); part 4, Inscriptiones Himyariticae et Sabaeae (3 vols., 1889 ff.).