4975 - Trans-National database and Atlas of Saints' Cults, c.1000- c.2000 This document was supplied by the depositor and has been modified by AHDS History AHDS History Introduction This document has been assembled from information supplied to AHDS History by the depositor and the depositor’s web site: http://www.le.ac.uk/elh/grj1/intro.html Additions made to the document by the AHDS are contained in a separate section at the end of the depositor supplied information. The user is also advised to consult the study’s read file. A collaborative research programme The project's aims and character The Trans-national Database and Atlas of Saints' Cults aims to establish a parish-by- parish, commune-by-commune inventory of religious devotion in Europe and beyond. Evidence of cults saintly, angelic and divine is built up from documentation and other sources, and centres on the dedications of churches and chapels and of subsidiary foci of devotion such as side altars, images and lights. The evidence is being mapped electronically, using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and together with a third dimension, commentaries on the spatial, temporal and thematic patterns revealed by the investigation, the atlas and database is being made available to other researchers and to the public at large. Even without the mapping, the user is able to move place-by-place across the landscape, and forwards and backwards over time, observing and analysing the identity and patterns of the cults venerated. TASC's objective is scientific: the construction of a systematic, comprehensive record, which will then form a tool for academic research, as well as a public work of reference. By representing collaborative, interdisciplinary research, linking the humanities and the social sciences across national and institutional borders, and open to constant up-date and up-grading, TASC is synergetic and organic. By definition, it will always be work-in- progress. Methodology: Database and mapping The object is to build a geographically-ordered inventory recording all evidence for the presence and the absence of cults saintly, angelic and divine, in every locality of a given region. This should be done in a 'flat', spreadsheet database (using a software program compatible with Excel), so that the data can be quickly and easily added to, rearranged, and sorted for immediate, low-level but essential analysis and distribution. It also ensures maximum inter-operability and availability to other researchers, plus ease of subsequent electronic mapping in GIS (Geographic Information Systems), and import into relational, inter-operable databases, such as Access, for more sophisticated interrogation together with storage of additional information, linkage to digital libraries, and publication on the Internet. Geographic ordering is a sine qua non for the following reasons: TASC is a project for an Atlas and Database and TASC datasets are intended to allow ease of mapping, whether on paper or in GIS. Religious devotion cannot be divorced from the societies and communities (at all levels) in which it is found. From its earliest centuries, bishops have been territorial and dioceses have been set up to serve political entities, lordships, and peoples. Likewise, at the most local level, individual churches have been provided by lords or groups of inhabitants to serve particular communities. The more persistent cultural boundaries are those which follow watersheds, and the most frequent areas of discrete colonisation are those which coincide with river systems. TASC datasets are therefore organised, within dioceses, topographical by river-system. Experience shows that dedications are hierarchical in the same way that groups of settlements are hierarchical - that is, there are superior settlements (primary or central places, call them what you will) and there are lesser settlements. Choice of dedication often reflects the status of the settlement. Patronal cults relate to each other within large and small landed units, within individual parishes, and even within church buildings. TASC records should therefore be ordered by diocese; within each diocese by river- system; within each river-system by archdeaconry (or its equivalent); within each archdeaconry by deanery (or its equivalent); within each deanery by parish; within each parish by location (such as town, village, hamlet, hermitage, bridge, shrine, monastery, etc etc); within each location by status (that is, the most important church comes first, and so on in what seems to the researcher to be the most appropriate order; and within each building by status likewise (e.g. chancel before nave) and generally in a clockwise order beginning in the north. Recording absence of cult is as important as recording presence. If we do not know the extent of our ignorance, we cannot assess the knowledge we have, or the amount of work still to be done. All known or likely places of veneration, therefore (such as east ends of aisles, whether or not there is structural evidence for an altar), need to be recorded, and where the cult is not known, the word 'Unknown' must be entered in the column for 'Dedication'. How this geographical ordering works can be seen from the samples available in these web pages. Dated and sourced information is collated from as many categories of evidence as are relevant and available. Landscape features, fair and feast days, and wells are included, as well as chapels, altars, images and lights. All are recorded, even where the cult's identity is not yet known, since it's important to know the limits as well as the extent of our knowledge. By this means, evidence in depth is obtained. The records are ordered spatially, following the geography of administrative and topographic units (with the parish as the basic building block) and the layouts of individual buildings. Related contextual data supplements the raw evidence of devotion: place-name elements, for example, or the names of principal land-holders at key dates. Inclusion of such additional data is at the discretion of the individual researcher and will frequently depend on the availability of information. Local circumstances may also dictate the range and identity of geographical units which can be recorded, ecclesiastical as well as secular. In both cases, however, a series of core data fields is agreed by TASC's partners and enables data to be compared across regions and periods. Thus it is crucial to know the form which the observance of cult takes in any given instance: the dedication (patrocinium) of a church, for example. A common spatial ordering of the records is also essential: by and within parishes where these are known, for example, and at least by and within river catchment areas, the single immutable division of the landscape. Because the spelling of names can differ so widely, over time and locally as well as internationally, two extra electronic archives must be set up. One, a gazetteer of place- names, is likely in many areas to be ready to hand. Elsewhere this list must be created from scratch, though its compilation will be a help to many other groups besides the workers in TASC. The other necessary archive is a thesaurus of saints' names. Universally there is the problem of identifying a saint by his or her local name or its Latin version. In some areas this is compounded by the co-existence or development of 'pet'-names, many of which look nothing like the original. Electronic mapping of the database material is achieved by using GIS coverage of basic, usually parochial boundaries of the earliest available period (or as point data, identified by latitude and longitude, for example, or national cartographic agency grid-references where these are internationally compatible and/or covertible to lat/long). Within a common GIS software the database information can be sorted, interrogated, and spatially presented as variously as it is categorised. Thus by interrogating both the database and the mapping, information can be built up on individual cults, loci or types of devotion, and snapshots obtained of devotions at any given period. An important means of enriching this knowledge lies in the construction of a relational database, which can hold large amounts of information in separate compartments and which allow sophisticated searches, sorting, and interrogation. Records from the spreadsheet database can be imported, and enriched data exported in spreadsheet form for electronic mapping. The spreadsheet database and select GIS mapping in atlas form can be disseminated electronically via the Internet and on CD- Rom, as well as by paper publication. However, publication on the Internet of the relational database allows a much richer and deeper use of the material, namely access to on-line collections of relevant texts and images, thus creating an interactive digital library. Since additions and revisions will be continuously sought and submitted, the inventory will be held by internationally recognised and accessible academic data archives, such as the British Historical Data Service at the University of Essex, and ECAI, the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative administered by the University of California at Berkeley with technical support from the University of Sydney, Australia. Also under development (but still in its earliest stages of construction) is a mapping programme under which information from TASC datasets from across Europe can be viewed, together with relevant images, from a single cartographic base. The author of this