collectio

Collectio is a Latin noun meaning a gathering, collection, or compilation. It derives from the verb colligere, “to gather.” In Latin literature, collectio referred to both the act of assembling items and the resulting assemblage itself, and the term appears in various scholarly and administrative contexts across antiquity, the Middle Ages, and early modern periods.

In historical and legal contexts, collectio often signified a codified body of texts—collections of laws, decrees, or statutes compiled by editors, jurists, or rulers. In philology and manuscript studies, a collectio might denote a grouped edition or repertory of writings assembled for scholarly use. Because Latin titles frequently used collectio to indicate the nature of a compilation, many famous series and archives bear the word as part of a proper name, though the precise scope depends on the project.

In modern usage, collectio is less common as everyday English terminology; when encountered in English-language scholarship, it is usually translated as “collection.” It also appears as a Latin-influenced proper name in library catalogs, digital libraries, and academic editions to label a specific group of works assembled by a person or institution.

See also: collection, corpus, manuscript collection.