Germania Sacra Online – The Research Portal of Clerics and Religious Institutions before 1810 Bärbel Kröger, Christian Popp Germania Sacra, Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities Theaterstraße 7, D-37073 Göttingen Email: bkroege@gwdg.de, cpopp@gwdg.de Abstract The research project Germania Sacra provides a comprehensive prosopographical database, that makes structured and comparable data of the Church of the Holy Roman Empire available for further research. The database contains approximately 31,000 records of premodern persons, new data is continuously added. This digital index of persons is supplemented by the "Database of Monasteries, Convents and Collegiate Churches of the Old Empire". The access through ecclesiastical institutions offers a broad variety of visualization possibilities for the prosopographical data. Together with the digitized reference books of the Germania Sacra those databases constitute a research portal of clerics and religious institutions, which takes into consideration the enormous importance of the Church for the history of the Holy Roman Empire. In order to make as much information as possible accessible for scholarly use the next steps that will be undertaken are cross-institutional collaboration and integration of scientific data resources of other research projects. Keywords: Prosopography, Church of the Holy Roman Empire, Linked Data, Authority files, Cross-database query, Monasteries Given that the research project Germania Sacra was 1. Introduction founded 100 years ago, one wonders if the founding Within Europe, the Germania Sacra is a unique research fathers were aware of the sheer mass of material and the project that deals with the history of dioceses, necessary human and financial resources needed to cope monasteries, convents and collegiate churches in the Holy with such a project. We can assume they were. 1 As part of Roman Empire of the German Nation. The clerical the scientific community during the late 19th and early institutions included date from late antiquity until the 20th century, these scholars were influenced by the Reformation or, respectively, the secularization at the widespread optimism and positivism in regard to beginning of the 19th century. Geographically, research ambitious research projects in the field of the humanities. includes the present Federal Republic of Germany and the Seemingly, they believed that they could manage this border regions of neighboring countries. enormous task. The aim of the project is to present the source material of Today, about four generations later, the assessment is the respective archives in a way that makes structured and much more sober. Germania Sacra has existed for almost comparable data of the Church of the Holy Roman Empire 100 years, during this time 72 reference books have been available for further research. A key component of this is published. This, of course, means that only a small the prosopography; specifically an inventory of clerical amount of the archival material of the religious members of the Roman Empire, not just by name, but institutions and clerics has been reviewed. Consequently, with all the essential information that can be collected the vision of the founding fathers appears to be an from local archives and from Vatican sources. Contained illusion. At present the Union of the German Academies within the reference books published by Germania Sacra of Sciences and Humanities, which funds Germania Sacra are short biographies of the clerics in each of the studied since 2008, offers the most comprehensive humanities institutions. Thus, Germania Sacra provides biographical research programme in Germany and supports long-term lists of the bishops of a diocese, the canons or canonesses basic research projects. Nonetheless resources are of individual collegiate churches, the monks and nuns of restricted. Like all other research projects Germania Sacra numerous monasteries etc. 1 "Woher die erforderlichen Mittel nehmen und, wenn diese According to current research which considers vorhanden gewesen wären, wo die unentbehrlichen zahlreichen Mitarbeiter und Hilfskräfte finden und in eine approximately a thousand years of church history – from Organisation auf so weite Sicht, für zwei oder gar für drei the Roman Empire to the secularization – about 10,000 Generationen, einordnen? … So ist es gekommen, daß, monasteries and convents existed. If we assume that an sobald wir die ersten Grundlagen für Germania pontificia average institution over time had approximately 500 geschaffen hatten und sahen, daß allen Propheten zum Trotz clerical staff members, this means we are discussing dieser Versuch gelingen werde, wir daran gingen, die millions of individuals. Vorbereitungen für die Germania sacra zu treffen." Preamble of the first volume of Germania Sacra by Paul Fridolin Kehr, in: Abb & Wentz, 1929, pp. VII–VIII. 8 had to provide a precise and realistic concept and to developing resource with new data continuously added develop short-term objectives. The aim to collect and (approximately 1,500 records, May 2015). All digital publish all the prosopographic data of the Church of the resources are linked with each other, allowing access Holy Roman Empire does not seem to be realistic through a variety of search options and browsing anymore. However the digital revolution might indeed functions. give us another chance. In order to enable a deeper examination of the 2. Building a research portal prosopographical information found in Germania Sacra New technologies lead to new possibilities; the volumes, we have compiled a digital index of persons networking opportunities in the digital world breathe new who appear in the published reference books. This has led life into the vision of a comprehensive prosopographical to a scholarly database which provides comprehensive overview of the Church of the Roman Empire. Today, we information about the clerics of the Church of the Holy are much more involved with the scientific community, Roman Empire and other individuals associated with and it is much easier to work collaboratively on the clerical institutions. Currently, the database comprises collection of research data. We can easily make use of approximately 150,000 entries, 31,000 of them already research results that have emerged in quite different available on the public version of the database. The contexts, collating a variety of types of research material. "Digital Index of Persons" provides targeted access to the Ultimately, we will be able to publish research results biographical and prosopographical information in the much faster and with less effort, reaching a larger reference books. For this purpose, the complex audience than we ever could through traditional printed hierarchical structure of the index entries of the printed monographs. This also helps us to integrate more external reference books was transferred into a relational database. researchers into the process than ever before. As a result, queries for individuals can be made via a variety of search options: name, surname and its variants, personal data, including office data, institutional Consequently, Germania Sacra has created a broad affiliations, and geographic impact areas. The portfolio of digital resources in the field of the Church of identification and merging of data sets of identical persons the Holy Roman Empire in recent years. The key facility has been done manually so far and is mainly undertaken of the online portal is a scholarly "Digital Index of for high ranking church and secular officials (such as Persons" with a focus on clerics. Another primary feature bishops and abbots). is constituted by the digitized reference books concerning the history of ecclesiastical institutions compiled in the context of the long-term project which began in 1917. A The extensive amount of data contained in the "Database of Monasteries, Convents and Collegiate prosopographical database of Germania Sacra enables Churches of the Old Empire" was recently released. All reliable statistical and empirical studies that were – based digital offerings of Germania Sacra are works-in-progress; solely on the monographic publications – formerly not new volumes will be made available 3 years after their possible to this extent. Plurality of benefices and offices or publication. The biographical database is continuously family and social networks of church officials can be updated. Currently, it contains approximately 31,000 reconstructed and visualized much more easily by using records (May 2015). Similarly, the monastic database is a the data pool. By combining various search criteria,  9 Fig. 1: Database query for Benedictine bishops. correlations can be uncovered which go beyond the has already been implemented in the research portal of information provided in the printed reference books. Germania Sacra and achieves more relevance through our Fig. 1 for example shows the result of a query for rapidly growing databases. Benedictine bishops. 3. Collaboration and integration of data Alternative forms of access and a broad variety of In order to realize the vision of a comprehensive visualization possibilities for the prosopographical data prosopographical database, the preparation and are made possible by access through the ecclesiastical presentation of the Germania Sacra project data achieves institutions. For this purpose, we recently released the only the first step; additionally, cross-institutional "Database of Monasteries, Convents and Collegiate collaboration and integration of scientific data of other Churches of the Old Empire". Through the monastic research projects are essential. database, it is easy to get an overview of the abbots of a particular monastery or the abbesses of a particular group An important building block for reliable networking is the of monasteries from the same order in a particular region. systematic enrichment with authoritative data. For names of persons in German speaking countries, the authority All query results can be displayed on interactive maps that file GND (Gemeinsame Normdatei) of the German visualize the monastic landscape of the medieval and National Library is particularly relevant. 2 Automatic early modern periods. Temporal aspects as well as generation of links to external data sources by using GND regional criteria such as medieval dioceses or religious has become an established standard for a large number of orders can be modified by the user. In fig. 2 you can see scholarly biographical and prosopographical databases. for instance the screenshot of a map based query result for For the Germania Sacra Portal, we utilize this authority all collegiate churches in the medieval diocese of file to enrich our data and connect it to external web Halberstadt. Our research data has been used by scholars sources via automated links. Besides from other already, leading to new insights into several research biographical databases especially library catalogs, questions (e.g. Röckelein, 2015). inventory overviews of archives, editions of sources, Fig. 2: Map based query for collegiate churches in the diocese of Halberstadt. The entries of religious houses in this database are linked bibliographies and portrait collections are relevant to those clerics associated with the respective religious sources. houses that appear in Germania Sacra’s prosopographical database. For all institutions and individuals, the datasets provide interactive links which lead directly to the 2 In an international context the Virtual International Authority corresponding pages in digitized Germania Sacra File (VIAF) gives access to the national authority files like reference books. Presentation and internal linking of data GND (http://viaf.org). 10 In addition to authoritative data for personal names, we Suggestions can be recorded and, thus, improve the data enrich our records with authoritative data for corporate pool of all partners involved. bodies such as monasteries, orders and dioceses as well as geographic entities (GeoNames). In order to make 4. Conclusion: Digital strategy structured access to our data available, entries in Through the use of digital tools, the vision of the founding Wikipedia and DBpedia, 3 the biggest player in the linked fathers of Germania Sacra, to provide comprehensive and data cloud, are referenced. The records of the monastic reliable statistical prosopographical data for further database are already available in Linked Data format. research, appears achievable at last. In summary, the Data enrichment and semantic web technologies offer a following five points represent our digital strategy: high potential for condensing the information network of the relations of persons and clerical institutions for medieval and early modern times. a) The canonization of material produced by a number of scholars doing research for Germania Sacra leads to a comprehensive, structured, and solid data pool, while at Automated linking of individuals mentioned in scholarly the same time ensuring access to written sources. databases of medieval and early modern times is, nevertheless, a largely unsolved problem in the field of digital humanities. One reason is that most of these b) Using targeted search functions and different forms of individuals are not recorded in authority files. This visualization ensures a user-friendly presentation of data. situation is most likely not going to change in the near Information can be found much more easily. future. For many individuals, we simply don’t have enough data to provide reliable authentication (date of c) Integration in an institutional repository with the aim to birth and death, offices and official data). The achieve sustainable use and long-term availability of identification process is often complicated by name research data. For the Germania Sacra Portal, we use a variations, translation and transcription errors, Latinized DINI-certified DSpace repository that has been developed forms and the late-onset use of surnames. by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. There are a number of historical databases that are of d) Semi-automatic enrichment with authoritative data interest for the prosopography of the Church of the Holy increases the value of the data pool. It provides a basis for Roman Empire. 4 These provide biographical information automated linking to external online resources. The about clerics of medieval and early modern times, and Germania Sacra contributes to the improvement of the information about educational careers or benefice authority files of the German National Library (GND) and systems. Integrating that data by means of automatic the CERL Thesaurus and of the semantic web. mapping has proved difficult and often the identification of individuals remains hypothetic. e) Germania Sacra together with its partners develops innovative technical solutions for the complex issue of A pioneering contribution to completing this complex task linking heterogeneous data sets of premodern people. The is provided by an international cross-institutional project. result will be a user-friendly cross-database search tool. It Germania Sacra, together with the German Historical will interlink extant scholarly prosopographical infor- Institute in Rome (DHI) 5 and the Repertorium mation and help generate and share this knowledge. Academicum Germanicum (RAG) 6 is developing a cross- database query. We are developing technical solutions – 5. URLs for example the integration of algorithms or the use of Homepage Germania Sacra: thesauri – to enhance the search for phonetic and http://www.germania-sacra.de orthographic name variants as well as Latinized names. We are going to provide an interactive system, which on Digital Index of Persons: the one hand, gives qualified identifying suggestions to http://personendatenbank.germania-sacra.de the user. On the other hand, researchers are invited to make their own suggestions concerning the identification Database of Monasteries, Convents and Collegiate process of matching individuals to particular records. Churches of the Old Empire: http://klosterdatenbank.germania-sacra.de 3 DBpedia extracts information from Wikipedia resources and allows users to semantically query the data, including related 6. References datasets (http://dbpedia.org). 4 Abb, G., Wentz, G. (1929). 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