Citing Patrologia Latina

shevans02
My field is historical theology, and I often cite ancient and medieval texts edited by JP Migne in the Patrologia Latina (PL). There is a standard format for citing texts from this series which I haven't been able to reproduce in Zotero. The format involves citing the ancient text (which requires text-specific divisions, often "book" and "chapter") followed by the PL citation in parentheses (which requires the PL volume and column). Here is an example for a text I am currently working on:

Isidore of Seville, De Fide Catholica, lib. 1, cap. 10.2 (PL 83, col. 468 B–C).

Is there any way to produce a citation such as this with Zotero? Or should I abstain from primary texts in Zotero and limit my Zotero usage to secondary sources?
  • damnation
    You can use the suffix field for this.
    I assume you're citing in footnotes?

    See https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage
  • shevans02
    Thanks, this solved my issue. I also had to use the Style Editor to remove the bit of code adding an "n.d." when no date is given, since it is not customary to include this for ancient documents.

    Another question: In my field, bibliographies are normally separated into at least two sections, Primary Sources and Secondary Sources (sometimes more). Is there a way to separate the bibliography in that way with Zotero? I can't seem to find anything so far.
  • shevans02
    Ah, I may have found a solution. Create separate subcollections for Primary and Secondary texts, and then use the "Create bibliography from collection" option to make two separate bibliographies.
  • DonAndreaMancini
    Sorry I have the same problem. I didn't understand how to create the biblioghraphic record in Zotero of a book contained in the Latin and Greek Patrology (Migne). If Shevans managed to solve it, can you give me an example? thanks!
  • shevans02
    @DonAndreaMancini I ultimately wound up not using Zotero but doing my citations "by hand," since I just prefer the extra control. The solution that the user above suggested to me was to use the suffix field. If you can find this, it will allow you to simply enter the PL/PG citation manually as a "suffix," that is, something that is just pasted in after the regular citation. So, to use my example above, the Isidore text information is what you would enter into the actual citation parameters, and the PL material would just go into the suffix. This seemed to be working fine, but again, I just found the whole thing a bit too laborious.
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