One of the biggest challenges associated with semantic analysis is to obtain a distance from existing semantic knowledge. Methods from the field of Digital Humanities allow us to find new ways to cope with that challenge. Text mining or topic modeling tools offer a new perspective on words and their combination within a text. The following article highlights the relevance of digital methods for historical semantics, using the Latin term virtus and its medieval use as an example. It raises the question of genre and diachronic semantic change and demonstrates how digital tools have the potential to not only challenge our knowledge about texts but also help to reorganize what we already know.