How did the Latin language change as Christianity emerged and spread in late antiquity? This is the question being tackled by Christian Hornung, Professor for the History of Early Christianity and Patristic Studies in the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Bonn, in a new research project. He is aiming to compile a new concise dictionary of early Christian Latin ( Handwörterbuch des antiken christlichen Lateins , HACL) that will index the corpus of Latin Christian literature from Tertullian to Isidore of Seville and document the evolution of early Christian Latin vocabulary in all its dimensions, i.e. encompassing the history of ideas, institutions, society, law and religion. The German Research Foundation ( Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft , DFG) will be providing €1.4 million in funding during the long-term project’s first phase to 2030. It is set to run for 12 years in total.
“Getting approval for the long-term HACL project represents an unqualified success for the Franz Joseph Doelger Institute, the Faculty of Catholic Theology and interdisciplinary classical studies at the University of Bonn,” says Hornung. “Following successful completion of the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum , a comprehensive encyclopedia of the ancient world and Christianity, another standard work of reference for classical studies—in 10 volumes this time—is going to be written in Bonn, starting next year.” As well as being Director of the Franz Joseph Doelger Institute for Late Antiquity Studies, Hornung is also a member of the Present Pasts Transdisciplinary Research Area and the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at the University of Bonn.
The HACL will support basic research in classical studies for all students and researchers working on questions relating to Christian late antiquity. There are expected to be 1,500 lemmata, or dictionary entries, each one selected based on its relevance, by cross-referencing with other reference works and in line with seven themes: Church institutions and organizations, law, ethics, liturgy, Bible translations, theology, and philosophy and the history of ideas. The HACL will be published in both electronic and printed versions by the prestigious Belgian publisher Brepols. In partnership with the Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH) at the University of Cologne, a digital platform is also being created to aid the visual representation and comprehensive indexing of Hornung’s research findings. The publication will be co-edited by Professor Anja Bettenworth (Cologne), Professor Emanuela Colombi (Udine, Italy), Professor Therese Fuhrer (Munich), Professor Hartmut Leppin (Frankfurt am Main), Professor Hildegund Müller (Notre Dame, US), Professor Konrad Vössing (Bonn) and Professor Andreas Weckwerth (Eichstätt).
About the funding: DFG long-term projects
The DFG understands “long-term projects” to mean large-scale projects in the humanities, such as editions, corpora, archaeological excavations and complex longitudinal studies, that are expected to yield significant interdisciplinary results on account of their nature but will require ongoing funding for between seven and twelve years. A sum of €1.4 million has now been approved for the first phase of the HACL project from 2027 to 2030.
The Franz Josef Doelger Institute for Late Antiquity Studies
The Franz Josef Doelger Institute conducts interdisciplinary research into the diverse interrelationships between Christianity, Judaism and paganism in antiquity and the transformation into the culture of late antiquity that these sparked. It was established at the University of Bonn in the 1970s as an arm of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Between 1955 and 2026, the institute focused on publishing the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum , an international standard work of reference for classical and cultural studies. See https://www.antike-und-christentum.de for more information.
The Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Bonn
The Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Bonn is one of the most prestigious of its kind in Germany, with teaching underpinned by a strong track record of research in the individual theological disciplines. It trains future priests and lay ecclesial ministers as well as religious education teachers for Gymnasien , Gesamtschulen and Berufsschulen . Its bachelor’s degree programs open up the broad spectrum of study options and career paths in the humanities.