Germany and Italy 263 rerum Germanicarum. This series, beginning with the sources of the Carolingian period, is sometimes referred to as " Pertz," from its editor. There are besides in folio five volumes of laws Leges and one of Diplomata. Portions of this folio edition are out of print and are very expensive. A reorganization of the whole great enterprise was undertaken after the death of Pertz, and since 1877 volumes have been appearing in quarto in several divisions. The Auctores antiquissimi, 13 volumes, include the Roman writers who deal with the earliest history of the Germans. Then there are the Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum and the Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum. All these relate almost exclu- sively to a period anterior to Pippin and Charlemagne, and so bear rather on the history of western Europe than on that of Germany, in the later and narrower sense of the term. There are other sections of the quarto series, for example, the Leges, the Epistolae, etc. Many of the more important annals and chronicles included in the Monumenta have been reprinted in a very inexpensive form in the Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, Hannover, 1840 sqq., 42 vols., octavo. In some cases the text of the octavo edition is more recent and critical than that in the expensive Monumenta. Under the title Die Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, 90 vols., 2d ed., Berlin and Leipzig, 1885 sqq., M. 228.15, admirable translations by distinguished German scholars have been issued of the chief sources of German history for the whole period from Caesar to the end of the fourteenth century. 1 It is hardly necessary to add that the Monumenta and its offshoots, the octavo edition and the Geschichtschreiber, although edited with special attention to Germany, are far the best of all the collections of sources for the student of the general history of western Europe during the Middle Ages. The annals for the early tenth century are very meager. The extract from The Continuation of Regino, given above, pp. 245 sqq., affords an idea of their character; but in the latter half of the century several important historical works appeared : WIDUKIND, Deeds of the Saxons, covering the period of Henry I and Otto the Great. The author was a monk of Corvei, and began his 1 References to the Monumenta are usually abbreviated, e.g. MG. or M.G.H. SS. rer. Mer. = Monumenta Gcrmaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingi- carum. For a fuller description and an analysis of this and other great sets, see Potthast, Wegweiser durch die Geschichtsuverke des eurof'dischen Mittelalters, 2d ed., pp. xxxii sqq. Die Geschicht- schreiber der deutschen Vorzeit. Sources for the tenth and early eleventh centuries.
