The documents of the abbey S. Maria della Grotta of Vitulano (BN): 1200-1250

A Scholarly Digital Edition

L’edizione digitale delle fonti documentarie del Medioevo Naples, 31 May 2018

Antonella Ambrosio – Vera Schwarz-Ricci

Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

Edition of the S. Maria della Grotta parchments: 1200-1250

The Monasterium Italy group, coordinated by Antonella Ambrosio, is

dealing with the Italian legal documentation, in particular with the

edition, encoding and processing for research purposes of mediaeval

documents in Campania.

• idea: Antonella Ambrosio

• coordination: A. Ambrosio, G. Vogeler, V. Schwarz-Ricci

• editions: Antonella Ambrosio, Giovanni Araldi, Maria Rosaria

Falcone, Paola Massa, Vera Schwarz-Ricci, Maria Elisabetta

Vendemia, Georg Vogeler

• cooperation: Hans Clausen (University of Graz)

Institutional Support

• Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici

• International Centre for Archival Research (ICARUS), Vienna

• University of Graz

• University of Cologne (Cologne Center for eHumanities)

Financing

• EnarC - The European Network on Archival Cooperation (EU, Culture Programme 2007-2013)

• co:op – community as opportunity. the creative archives’ and users’ network (EU, Creative Europe 2014-2020)

• university funding UNINA

Digital critical editions of documents: some examples

Our aims

• A digital critical edition for scholars without specific encoding training

• An edition as cooperation of scholars with different backgrounds: collaborative edition

• An accessible edition

• A dynamic edition open to further elaboration and to contributions of other scholars (crowdsourcing)

• A stable product, recognised in academic circles: paper edition with ISBN

First experimentation of the editorial tool of Monasterium.Net

Our two starting points

• paper edition of the charters of the 11°-12° centuries of S. Maria della Grotta

• digitised parchments fonds of the Biblioteca della Società napoletana di Storia Patria on Monasterium.Net

S. Maria della Grotta (Vitulano)

Library of the Society for Neapolitan History

Charters of

S. Maria della Grotta

Our proceeding

• creation of a collection with the parchments

private virtual working environment with customized tools

with:

• high-quality digital reproductions of the charter (recto and verso)

• possibility to edit and annotate images

• creation of image clippings for further comparative analysis

• user-friendly text editor

• preview

• possibility to share charters with other users (social editing)

<cei:invocatio> </cei:invocatio>

Essential preview

Two questions

1. Why the effort? Why don’t we use a word processor and disseminate a pdf?

2. Where’s the critical edition? Or, in other words, where are the footnotes?

Background: XML

• Extensible Markup Language (XML): a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable

• => text is enriched with “annotations” which formalize the structure of the text

A. Cappelli, Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane

<author>A. Cappelli</author>, <title>Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane</title>

Encoding standards

Standards in XML-Encoding guarantee generality and usability across the internet – and long term preservation

• For encoding of textual data in Digital Humanities:

• TEI – Text Encoding Initiative

• For encoding of charters:

• CEI – Charter Encoding Initiative

Monasterium:

<cei:invocatio>In nomine Domini.</cei:invocatio>

<cei:subscriptio>Ego Petrus iudex.</subscriptio>

Where’s the critical edition?

• Critical apparatus with palaeographical and philological observations of the editor, textual reconstruction

dedicated tags:

• <cei:damage>, e.g. with further specification of the extent or the agent

• <cei:corr> with further description of the type

• <cei:add> with indication of the hand

• <cei:space>: free space with indication of the extent

quod dicebat aviam suam deposuisse penes

ipssam ecclesia(m)a ...

a Om. il segno abbr. per la lettera nasale.

An example: cei:supplied

quod dicebat aviam suam deposuisse penes ipssam ecclesia<cei:supplied type="/Om. il segno abbr. per la lettera nasale./">m</cei:supplied>

From XML into ... a traditional edition

How to transform the digital edition in Monasterium in a traditional edition?

Extensible Stylesheet Language – Formatting Objects

1. XSL-FO conversion of the XML => XML/FO File

2. XML/FO File transformed into PDF (with a FO-Processor)

Example 1

<fo:block text-align="center" space-before="0mm" font-weight="bold" keep-with-next.within-page="always" space-after="0mm">4</fo:block><fo:block text-align="center" keep-with-next.within-page="always">1201 ottobre</fo:block>

Example 2

• quod dicebat aviam suam deposuisse penes ipssam ecclesia<cei:supplied type="/Om. il segno abbr. per la lettera nasale./"> m</cei:supplied>

• quod dicebat aviam suam deposuisse penes ipssam ecclesiam<fo:footnote><fo:inline font-size="8pt" font-style="normal" baseline-shift="super">f</fo:inline><fo:footnote-body><fo:block/></fo:footnote-body></fo:footnote>

…

Lost in Transmedialisation?

• social edition: necessity of procedures, homogenisation

• transformation process: necessity of protocolls, mapping

• transformation process: national imprint, compromises

Other useful tools

1. Annotation Tool

2. Image elaboration

3. Geotool

Annotation tool

Image clippings and processing

The importance of digital editions

for the valorisation of the Italian parchment

heritage before 1300

Encoding model: some diplomatistic elements

• Dispositio

<cei:dispositio>

• Clausole

<cei:SetPhrase> con attributo di specificazione

• Dichiarazione notarile con Dichiarazione notarile_segno grafico a chiusura con Dichiarazione notarile_causa della dichiarazione del notaio

<cei:SetPhrase> con attributo di specificazione

• Autocorrezione

<cei:SetPhrase> con attributo di specificazione

• Sottoscrizione/i_nome_titoli

<cei:subscriptio>

<cei:testis>

Toponimo/i e Microtoponimo/i

<cei:placeName>

Altra/e persona/e_ patronimico- provenienza- funzione

<cei:persName>

Ente ecclesiastico e Ente ecclesiastico_luogo

<cei:orgName>

<cei:placeName>

Dato economico [in natura o in denaro]

<cei:num>

<cei:index>

Encoding model: some elements for historical analysis

Conclusioni

Big data of the Past:

Vision or near future?