RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

An index of the western latin archival sources (VII c.-1520)

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di TRENTO - FILOSOFIA, STORIA E BENI CULTURALI - ()

Research Unit Leader

Donatella Frioli

Description

The research unit will work in the broader scientific context of a project regarding the census of european medieval and renaissance lists of books (from VIII c. to 1520, excluding France and Tuscany). The project and the system used for its management has already its own standard procedures to store, manage and index digital data, which obviously will be used by the reasearch unit.
Main tasks of the reasearch (according to the general working plan of the project) unit will be the enhancement of the existing census, particularly for the most peripheral areas of the Latin West, paying a strong attention for types of sources which traditionally are considered only from a statistical point of view (i.e. inventories, lists of books, various kinds of judicial acts, borrowing lists, etc.), in order to better understand the role played by those written sources, and update the scientific context. The research work will be based mainly, but not only, on printed material. All data gathered will be arranged by macro-areas, according to geographical and chronological criteria. For each record will be provided: a document summary, informations concerning its tradition, printed editions (if availables) and main scientific bibliography. The document description will follow the structure and use the elements of the existing dababase records (cfr. model A).

The data-base wiil be structured to store the following informations:

Place name (in its original language)
Books owner’s name (both indviduals or institutional bodies)
First owner’s name or receiver’s name
Dating for the document
Source description
Source typology
Document description
Document summary (‘Titulus + Incipit + Explicit’)
Printed editions (where availables)
Main bibliography

The local research unit in Trento will be responsible also for the data-entry activity: all gathered data (collected according to the general scientific principles of the project) will be entered in the R.I.Ca.Bi.M data-base, and - in collaboration with the local unit in Verona - reviewed, unified and prepared for the printing. Involved research units will use scientific datas stored in the shared data-base of “Medioevo latino”: this assures constant datas updates and access to a unique knowledge base, growth during the three last decades of humanistic and medievistic studies.

The management of the onomasticon will be the most relavant task of the local research unit in Trento: errors due to wrong transcriptions and translations and other mismatches could be corrected thanks to the informations stored in the shared data-base of ‘Medioevo latino’; where normalization is not suitable and/or possible all the variants and aliases will be recorded. There isn’t general agreement concerning anthroponym normalization strategies (i.e. latin vs vernacular forms, etc.), so the aim of the research unit is to build up a sort of ‘authority list’ that could become a standard reference for the medieval and humanistic research areas. The adopted strategy will be flexible, in order to render the complexity of the phenomenon: avoiding forced normalization processes, the the leading criterium will be the diplomatic transcription; in selected cases, the sistem will record (in a “footnote” field) other forms and variants on the basis of the collation of other sources. In absence of testified forms (i.e. blanks and gaps in the sources, ecc.) the selected form will be marked with italics. Another task for the research unit in Trento will be the creation of a list of unpublished or only-partially-published sources (that we known about from secondary sources) focused on the italian region: such index will be a valuable instrument expecially for editors.