Bibliothecarius Modernus

A Jekyll site publishing AI-assisted translations of Latin Patristic texts. Provides side-by-side Latin/English translations of early Church fathers and medieval theologians, many of which lack existing English translations.

Translations prioritize accessibility over scholarly authority—the original Latin is always displayed alongside English for verification.

Requirements

• Ruby 2.7+
• Jekyll 4.x
• Bundler

Local Development

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

Site available at http://localhost:4000.

Deployment

Push to main branch. GitHub Actions builds and deploys to GitHub Pages automatically.

Custom Ruby plugins in _plugins/ require GitHub Actions rather than standard GitHub Pages builds.

Structure

_posts/              # Blog posts (layout: tabbed_post)
_layouts/            # Page templates including tabbed Latin/English/Analysis view
_plugins/            # Custom Liquid filters
_templates/          # New post template
_data/               # Category and video configuration
assets/
  translations/      # JSON files with Latin/English text chunks
  css/
  js/
  images/

Adding New Posts

1. Copy _templates/new_post.md to _posts/YYYY-MM-DD-title.md
2. Create translation JSON in assets/translations/
3. Update front matter with translation_json path

Translation JSON format:

{
  "chunks": [
    {
      "chunk_number": "1",
      "original_latin": "Latin text...",
      "cleaned_english_translation": "English translation..."
    }
  ]
}

Related Resources

• Project Blog
• Latin Patristic Texts Repository - Source texts and interlinear translations
• YouTube Channel - Video presentations with Latin/English display

License

CC0 1.0 Universal - see LICENSE