Section 4: Archives and Research:
Stefan PETERSEN und Hanna KEß (Würzburg/DE) „Die Hohe Registratur des Lorenz Fries (1489-1550). Erfassung, Untersuchung und Edition eines Archivrepertoriums des 16. Jahrhunderts im Internet“
The archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg holds three impressive folios with the signa-tures „Standbuch 1011,1012 and 1014“, which form the three parts of the so-called Hohe Re-gistratur. They used to be the central finding aid in the registry of the prince-bishops of Würzburg in the 16th century. Their contents are arranged in alphabetical order: the keywords mostly refer to persons, places or subjects related to the prince-bishopric of Würzburg. The Hohe Registratur therefore offers a unique access to its administration at the beginning of the Early Modern Period.
Even though it was written by different hands, the main hand can be clearly identified as Lorenz Fries (1489-1550), the secretary and diplomat of three prince-bishops of Würzburg, who is chiefly famous for his historiographical works Chronik der Bischöfe von Würzburg and his Bauernkriegschronik. In his position in the registry he was also in charge of the prince-bishops’ central archive - an important political weapon at that time. In order to sharpen this weapon Lorenz Fries created the Hohe Registratur and designed its structure and the index of topics. Until now it is the only finding aid for the cartularies at the archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg.
Since 2007 this Hohe Registratur is made digitally accessible in form of a database at the De-partment of Regional History of Franconia at the University of Würzburg. This was made pos-sible by a two-year start-up financing from the DFG. The project aims not only to open up the sources at the archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg to further investigation, but also to understand the functioning of the prince-bishops’ archive and registry.
The presentation firstly illustrates the Hohe Registratur and its functioning based on an exam-ple: it follows the track from an entry in the Hohe Registratur via an entry in a cartulary to the original charter. Subsequently it introduces the digitalization project: On the one hand it d-scribes the structure and contents of the database. On the other hand it presents some prob-lems connected with the digital preparation of an archival finding aid giving two examples.
Tobias SCHENK (DE) „Präsentation archivischer Erschließungsergebnisse analog und digital: Das deutsch-österreichische Kooperationsprojekt "Die Akten des Kaiserlichen Reichshofrats" - “Presentation of the results of archival indexing, both analogue and digital. “The Files of the Imperial Aulic Council”, a German-Austrian Cooperation Project.”
Legal case files are among the most important sources for research of the early modern age, as they allow seeing things from various different angles in terms of jurisdiction, everyday life, mentality and micro-history. The same goes for the archival heritage of the two supreme courts of the Holy Roman Empire – the Imperial Chamber Court (“Reichskammergericht”), founded in 1495, and the Aulic Council (“Reichshofrat”), established in the 16th century. In Germany those past decades of analysing the Imperial Chamber Court files helped a great deal to re-assess the Holy Roman Empire as being a well-functioning judicial system. The Aulic Council on the other hand attracted far less attention, even though it covered a much greater area of competences both geographically and content-wise. Apart from science-related historical rea-sons, this is mostly due to the insufficient level of indexing of its legal files sto-red in the central Habsburg archive (“Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv” - HHStA). They are estimated to include 70,000 files, which in quantity equal the number of Imperial Chamber Court files of all German archives put together. In view of such quantities, a thorough and complete indexing of those files will surely not be possible during the archive’s normal wor-king hours. In 2007 the Acad-emy of Sciences in Göttingen, however, succeeded in initiating an indexing project scheduled to run for 15 years which aims at re-cataloguing about a third of all Aulic Council files based on scientific criteria. This project which is carried out in close cooperation with the Austrian State Archives and the Austrian Academy of Sciences will ini-tially focus on legal files from the 16th and 17th century, building on experiences gained du-ring the indexing of the Imperial Chamber Court files. The results are being published in prin-ted inventories, which have been continuously released since 2009. Next to this well-established way of publication, the website of the Austrian State Archives is assuming an inc-reasingly important role in presenting the files of the Aulic Council in the context of their tectonic genesis. From an archivist’s point of view, the files of the Aulic Council may well be described as cluster records of Old European calibre. Indexing them will open up both hori-zontal and vertical research opportunities at numerous other archives in Europe. Hence the archival heritage of the Aulic Council is of a cross-linking potential hardly found elsewhere in the file records of the early modern age.
Alois HAIDINGER (Wien/AT) „Archive und Handschriftenforschung in Österreich“ - “Archives and the study of manuscripts in Austria”
The study of manuscripts is first and foremost concerned with manuscripts stored in libraries. This also holds true for those projects dealing with the cataloguing of medieval manuscripts at Austrian monastic libraries, formerly and currently supervised by the Commission for Paleog-raphy and Codicology of Medieval Manuscripts of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
In monasteries, any late medieval archival manuscript had almost without exception been ma-nufactured in the monastic scriptorium itself. The manuscripts of a monastic library, on the other hand, were not only produced by the monastic scribes but rather acquired by way of pur-chase, exchange or donation. Whilst manuscripts of an archive are usually dated or easy to time precisely due to their contents, most of the manuscripts in a monastic library are of unknown date of origin, which therefore has to be determined by comparing type of script and analysing watermarks.
Examining the paper of dated archival manuscripts gives us a clear picture of what sorts of pa-per where normally used in a scriptorium. When two undated manuscripts of a monastic library are attested to carry identical watermarks, it is safe to assume that the manuscripts we-re pro-duced only a few years apart. This method has already been used with great success in the dat-ing of 650-some paper manuscripts of the 14th and 15th century at the monastic libra-ry of Klos-terneuburg: Several hundred watermarks where identified in approximately 50 da-ted land regis-ters and account books opened before 1600. To a large extent those watermarks could be veri-fied in other undated manuscripts of the library.
Archival manuscripts provide us with a much better idea of how script developed than any of the liturgical, literary or legal manuscripts that can usually neither be pinpointed in date or place. Archival manuscripts – such as for instance the Vienna city codex, called the “Iron Book” – were normally kept by a large number of people over an extended period of time. By means of script analysis, such manuscripts become a very valuable source of reference for tim-ing undated material. In general, a more intensive research into archival material could greatly improve our concept of script development.
Antonella AMBROSIO (Napoli/IT) “Monasterium from the Research to the Didactics at the University of Naples”
The essence of my speech is to offer a concrete example of the educational potential use of the portal Monasterium.net and, in particular, of the software EditMOM. This example is re-pre-sented by Diplomatics and Exegesis of historical sources put in the Master in Library and Archival Science and Methodology of the Research, during the academic year 2009 – 2010. It is in the broader context of the research conducted at the Department of History at the Univer-sity of Studies of Naples Federico II, in collaboration with Icarus, within the Monasterium project that led to the creation of several digital archives on the portal Monasterium.net.
The course offered the students, aspiring archivists, a training task of describing and editing of medieval charters, from the Southern Italy digital archives in Monasterium.net.
In a first phase were presented basic issues in the history of charters in the Middle Ages, with particular reference to documentation produced and stored in Southern Italy, in the context of the most trusted online resources available for the use of medieval documents and existing digi-tal technologies, such as the XML markup language.
At a later stage first a group and than an individual activity was carried out in computer lab, through which, according to the pedagogical principle of 'learning by doing', students carried out practical experiences on medieval charters created with EditMOM software.
These experiments were aimed primarily at assessing the tradition of the text (original, copy, etc.), the diplomatic analysis of the forms, the formulation of abstracts and transcription, the acquisition of the methodology of critical edition.
The results achieved by students in the two described phases, and during the ongoing and fi-nal evaluations, encourage to think that this kind of teaching is able to convey contents and meth-odology of the discipline, in a more simple and more appreciated way by students, and to make them aware of issues relating to the archivist profession made even more challenging in the digital age.
Daniel RUSSEL (München/DE) „Virtuelles deutsches Urkundennetzwerk. Ein Projekt im Spannungsfeld von Archiven und Forschung“ - “Virtual german Chartersnetwork. A Project joining Archives and Research”
Charters from the Middle and early Modern Age are a prominent group of sources for histori-cal research. With the critical analysis of their authenticity in the early Modern Age, at that time a relevant concern for the everyday life, the development of the methodology of modern historical research had begun. The Projekt "Virtuelles deutsches Urkundennetzwerk (Virtual German Charters-network)" aims at creating a research-environment for this ubiquitous group of sources, which accesses all possibilities of the modern information technologies. There are three main goals: First, the prototypical development of workflows, aiming at the successive, long-term, allotted and cooperative digitalisation of the entire German charters portfolio. Second, to design/develop technical instruments that can create a working environment in accordance with the information technologies. Third, this work environment should be tested within university research and teaching through the implementation of a range of carefully constructed pilot projects.
Through the creation of such a research environment based on the platform of the monasteri-um project, which can be used for the further handling of one of the central group of historical sources by medieval studies, the goal of sustainability will be directly targeted. By expanding the functionality of this platform, the project also archives its evolutionary aim.
Stefan PETERSEN und Hanna KEß (Würzburg/DE) „Die Hohe Registratur des Lorenz Fries (1489-1550). Erfassung, Untersuchung und Edition eines Archivrepertoriums des 16. Jahrhunderts im Internet“
The archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg holds three impressive folios with the signa-tures „Standbuch 1011,1012 and 1014“, which form the three parts of the so-called Hohe Re-gistratur. They used to be the central finding aid in the registry of the prince-bishops of Würzburg in the 16th century. Their contents are arranged in alphabetical order: the keywords mostly refer to persons, places or subjects related to the prince-bishopric of Würzburg. The Hohe Registratur therefore offers a unique access to its administration at the beginning of the Early Modern Period.
Even though it was written by different hands, the main hand can be clearly identified as Lorenz Fries (1489-1550), the secretary and diplomat of three prince-bishops of Würzburg, who is chiefly famous for his historiographical works Chronik der Bischöfe von Würzburg and his Bauernkriegschronik. In his position in the registry he was also in charge of the prince-bishops’ central archive - an important political weapon at that time. In order to sharpen this weapon Lorenz Fries created the Hohe Registratur and designed its structure and the index of topics. Until now it is the only finding aid for the cartularies at the archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg.
Since 2007 this Hohe Registratur is made digitally accessible in form of a database at the De-partment of Regional History of Franconia at the University of Würzburg. This was made pos-sible by a two-year start-up financing from the DFG. The project aims not only to open up the sources at the archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg to further investigation, but also to understand the functioning of the prince-bishops’ archive and registry.
The presentation firstly illustrates the Hohe Registratur and its functioning based on an exam-ple: it follows the track from an entry in the Hohe Registratur via an entry in a cartulary to the original charter. Subsequently it introduces the digitalization project: On the one hand it d-scribes the structure and contents of the database. On the other hand it presents some prob-lems connected with the digital preparation of an archival finding aid giving two examples.
Tobias SCHENK (DE) „Präsentation archivischer Erschließungsergebnisse analog und digital: Das deutsch-österreichische Kooperationsprojekt "Die Akten des Kaiserlichen Reichshofrats" - “Presentation of the results of archival indexing, both analogue and digital. “The Files of the Imperial Aulic Council”, a German-Austrian Cooperation Project.”
Legal case files are among the most important sources for research of the early modern age, as they allow seeing things from various different angles in terms of jurisdiction, everyday life, mentality and micro-history. The same goes for the archival heritage of the two supreme courts of the Holy Roman Empire – the Imperial Chamber Court (“Reichskammergericht”), founded in 1495, and the Aulic Council (“Reichshofrat”), established in the 16th century. In Germany those past decades of analysing the Imperial Chamber Court files helped a great deal to re-assess the Holy Roman Empire as being a well-functioning judicial system. The Aulic Council on the other hand attracted far less attention, even though it covered a much greater area of competences both geographically and content-wise. Apart from science-related historical rea-sons, this is mostly due to the insufficient level of indexing of its legal files sto-red in the central Habsburg archive (“Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv” - HHStA). They are estimated to include 70,000 files, which in quantity equal the number of Imperial Chamber Court files of all German archives put together. In view of such quantities, a thorough and complete indexing of those files will surely not be possible during the archive’s normal wor-king hours. In 2007 the Acad-emy of Sciences in Göttingen, however, succeeded in initiating an indexing project scheduled to run for 15 years which aims at re-cataloguing about a third of all Aulic Council files based on scientific criteria. This project which is carried out in close cooperation with the Austrian State Archives and the Austrian Academy of Sciences will ini-tially focus on legal files from the 16th and 17th century, building on experiences gained du-ring the indexing of the Imperial Chamber Court files. The results are being published in prin-ted inventories, which have been continuously released since 2009. Next to this well-established way of publication, the website of the Austrian State Archives is assuming an inc-reasingly important role in presenting the files of the Aulic Council in the context of their tectonic genesis. From an archivist’s point of view, the files of the Aulic Council may well be described as cluster records of Old European calibre. Indexing them will open up both hori-zontal and vertical research opportunities at numerous other archives in Europe. Hence the archival heritage of the Aulic Council is of a cross-linking potential hardly found elsewhere in the file records of the early modern age.
Alois HAIDINGER (Wien/AT) „Archive und Handschriftenforschung in Österreich“ - “Archives and the study of manuscripts in Austria”
The study of manuscripts is first and foremost concerned with manuscripts stored in libraries. This also holds true for those projects dealing with the cataloguing of medieval manuscripts at Austrian monastic libraries, formerly and currently supervised by the Commission for Paleog-raphy and Codicology of Medieval Manuscripts of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
In monasteries, any late medieval archival manuscript had almost without exception been ma-nufactured in the monastic scriptorium itself. The manuscripts of a monastic library, on the other hand, were not only produced by the monastic scribes but rather acquired by way of pur-chase, exchange or donation. Whilst manuscripts of an archive are usually dated or easy to time precisely due to their contents, most of the manuscripts in a monastic library are of unknown date of origin, which therefore has to be determined by comparing type of script and analysing watermarks.
Examining the paper of dated archival manuscripts gives us a clear picture of what sorts of pa-per where normally used in a scriptorium. When two undated manuscripts of a monastic library are attested to carry identical watermarks, it is safe to assume that the manuscripts we-re pro-duced only a few years apart. This method has already been used with great success in the dat-ing of 650-some paper manuscripts of the 14th and 15th century at the monastic libra-ry of Klos-terneuburg: Several hundred watermarks where identified in approximately 50 da-ted land regis-ters and account books opened before 1600. To a large extent those watermarks could be veri-fied in other undated manuscripts of the library.
Archival manuscripts provide us with a much better idea of how script developed than any of the liturgical, literary or legal manuscripts that can usually neither be pinpointed in date or place. Archival manuscripts – such as for instance the Vienna city codex, called the “Iron Book” – were normally kept by a large number of people over an extended period of time. By means of script analysis, such manuscripts become a very valuable source of reference for tim-ing undated material. In general, a more intensive research into archival material could greatly improve our concept of script development.
Antonella AMBROSIO (Napoli/IT) “Monasterium from the Research to the Didactics at the University of Naples”
The essence of my speech is to offer a concrete example of the educational potential use of the portal Monasterium.net and, in particular, of the software EditMOM. This example is re-pre-sented by Diplomatics and Exegesis of historical sources put in the Master in Library and Archival Science and Methodology of the Research, during the academic year 2009 – 2010. It is in the broader context of the research conducted at the Department of History at the Univer-sity of Studies of Naples Federico II, in collaboration with Icarus, within the Monasterium project that led to the creation of several digital archives on the portal Monasterium.net.
The course offered the students, aspiring archivists, a training task of describing and editing of medieval charters, from the Southern Italy digital archives in Monasterium.net.
In a first phase were presented basic issues in the history of charters in the Middle Ages, with particular reference to documentation produced and stored in Southern Italy, in the context of the most trusted online resources available for the use of medieval documents and existing digi-tal technologies, such as the XML markup language.
At a later stage first a group and than an individual activity was carried out in computer lab, through which, according to the pedagogical principle of 'learning by doing', students carried out practical experiences on medieval charters created with EditMOM software.
These experiments were aimed primarily at assessing the tradition of the text (original, copy, etc.), the diplomatic analysis of the forms, the formulation of abstracts and transcription, the acquisition of the methodology of critical edition.
The results achieved by students in the two described phases, and during the ongoing and fi-nal evaluations, encourage to think that this kind of teaching is able to convey contents and meth-odology of the discipline, in a more simple and more appreciated way by students, and to make them aware of issues relating to the archivist profession made even more challenging in the digital age.
Daniel RUSSEL (München/DE) „Virtuelles deutsches Urkundennetzwerk. Ein Projekt im Spannungsfeld von Archiven und Forschung“ - “Virtual german Chartersnetwork. A Project joining Archives and Research”
Charters from the Middle and early Modern Age are a prominent group of sources for histori-cal research. With the critical analysis of their authenticity in the early Modern Age, at that time a relevant concern for the everyday life, the development of the methodology of modern historical research had begun. The Projekt "Virtuelles deutsches Urkundennetzwerk (Virtual German Charters-network)" aims at creating a research-environment for this ubiquitous group of sources, which accesses all possibilities of the modern information technologies. There are three main goals: First, the prototypical development of workflows, aiming at the successive, long-term, allotted and cooperative digitalisation of the entire German charters portfolio. Second, to design/develop technical instruments that can create a working environment in accordance with the information technologies. Third, this work environment should be tested within university research and teaching through the implementation of a range of carefully constructed pilot projects.
Through the creation of such a research environment based on the platform of the monasteri-um project, which can be used for the further handling of one of the central group of historical sources by medieval studies, the goal of sustainability will be directly targeted. By expanding the functionality of this platform, the project also archives its evolutionary aim.
J. Kemper - am Freitag, 26. November 2010, 11:04
