Until now, the timeline has been the only way into the catalogue. It answers one question very well: when? When did this writer live, and who were their contemporaries? But it can’t answer two other questions readers keep bringing: what do you have on this subject? and who shaped whom? Two new tools, both under the Research menu, take those on.

Search the Library

Search the Library finds works by what they’re about. Type a subject (martyrdom, prayer, the dark night) and it searches the titles, descriptions, editions and authors of more than three thousand works, in Latin and English. Accents are optional, and pen names count: Silentio finds Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.

From there you can narrow the results by era, tradition, original language, type of work, and what you can actually read today: free in English, in our own reader, as an audiobook, or in the original language. Where a work has been rated, you can also filter by difficulty, or show only the works recommended for a general reader.

There’s no AI behind the search box. It’s a straightforward search of the catalogue, and every result is a real record you can open. Searches are logged anonymously (the words only, nothing about who typed them), so I can see what people look for and where the library still has gaps.

The Influence Map

The Influence Map shows the lines of influence between writers. Pick an author to see who shaped them on one side and whom they shaped on the other, with the work the influence came through where it’s known. Or switch to the Map view and see the whole web at once, laid out across the centuries.

Every line on the map is a judgment confirmed by a person. The connections are gathered as each author is researched: I use AI (Claude) to work through the sources and propose links with evidence, then review each one before it appears. Tertullian, John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila are done so far, so the map is small today and will grow author by author. An author whose research hasn’t been done yet shows only the links that others point to.

Where to find them

All three tools now sit together on the Research page, each with a short guide: How to Search the Library, How to Read the Influence Map, and the updated How to Use the Timeline. Each author’s page also has a new Influence section that links straight into the map, and a link under their tradition that opens a search.

As always, if something looks wrong (a missing work, a bad date, a link that should or shouldn’t be there), the Report an Issue button on each work’s page goes straight to me.