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Mapping Miracles: Early Medieval Hagiography and the Potential of GIS

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History and GIS

Abstract

Medieval history has welcomed the spatial turn, and there is an evidential and historiographical bias towards land and property issues in the field. Several significant collaborative medieval projects make use of GIS, but few individual historians have embraced GIS for early medieval research. GIS makes map-making accessible to anyone, including historians new to the technology, and facilitates the use of maps as research tools rather than simply as outputs. The interrogation of mapped data can reveal spatial patterns in narratives that were previously obscured, raising new research questions and posing new theories. GIS analysis demonstrated a geographical disparity between punitive and positive miracles for Sainte Foy’s miracle collection at Conques, confirming the socio-political outlook of the punitive miracles. At Bobbio, GIS could help solve a mystery surrounding the route taken by a procession of holy relics. If successful this could help clarify important tenth-century political and jurisdictional interactions between Bobbio and other local power brokers. Certain methodological concerns demand closer attention before the early medieval historian might fully commit to GIS. Nevertheless, the potential for revisiting medieval sources with GIS technologies offers exciting possibilities, as much for the individual historian as for larger-scale projects.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I thank Julia Barrow and Keith Lilley for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

  2. 2.

    http://www.qub.ac.uk/urban_mapping/index.htm and http://www.medievalchester.ac.uk/about/, both last accessed March 2012. The resulting publications particularly by Keith Lilley give examples of the implications of the research, for example, Lilley (2009). On the field of HGIS from a historical geographer’s perspective, see Lilley (2011a) and Lilley (2011b).

  3. 3.

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/mwgrid/, last accessed March 2012.

  4. 4.

    http://www.lancelot-project.pitt.edu/lancelot-project.html, last accessed March 2012.

  5. 5.

    http://www.goughmap.org, last accessed March 2012, on which see, for example, Lilley and Lloyd (2009) and Lloyd and Lilley (2009).

  6. 6.

    http://darmc.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do, last accessed March 2012.

  7. 7.

    http://www.francia.ahlfeldt.se/index.php, last accessed March 2012.

  8. 8.

    On which, see Layers (2010, 1–3).

  9. 9.

    Good introductions to this are Wickham (1994) and Davies and Fouracre (1995).

  10. 10.

    http://www.york.ac.uk/history/history-in-action/digging-into-data, last accessed March 2012.

  11. 11.

    http://www.langscape.org.uk/index.html, last accessed March 2012.

  12. 12.

    Individual historians are beginning to use GIS for making their own maps, for example, Armstrong (2008, 128); see also the chapter by Alexander von Lünen and the interview with Gunnar Olsson in this volume.

  13. 13.

    As pointed out in Gregory and Ell (2007, 10).

  14. 14.

    The broader context and further references for the arguments made herein are to be found in Taylor (2012).

  15. 15.

    In particular, the debate referring to “feudal revolution”, which began with the seminal study of Duby (1953) and exchange in the pages of Past and Present, sets many of the parameters of the debate: Bisson (1994), Barthélemy and White (1996) and Reuter and Wickham (1997). Literature on different components of the complex paradigm presented by Duby is now vast.

  16. 16.

    The rhetorical nature of medieval hagiographical texts is now fully acknowledged, with terms such as “monastic weapons” and “propaganda” applied to them: Rosenwein et al. (1991, 765), Ward (1987, 2) and Rollason (1985, 90).

  17. 17.

    A concept originally advocated in Lauwers (2005). See also Devroey and Lauwers (2007).

  18. 18.

    Bresslau (1934), henceforth MSC.

  19. 19.

    “Viewshed analysis” is a standard function to be found in most GIS packages.

  20. 20.

    A practice also known elsewhere on the continent: Dreslerová and Mikuláš (2010).

  21. 21.

    The most recent edition of the Latin text is that of Robertini (1994), hereon as LMSF. It is translated by Sheingorn (1995). On dating and authorship, see Robertini (1994).

  22. 22.

    Those remaining for Sainte-Foy are mainly held in the Conques cartulary, cf. Desjardins (1879).

  23. 23.

    See the interview with Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in this book about the re-districting of France in the wake of the French Revolution.

  24. 24.

    Foy’s punishment miracles should be considered a “vengeance script” (White, 2006, 172). Vengeance itself was part of normative feuding activity which was constructive in the building of power relations, as much as it could be destructive, for which the classic study is Miller (1990).

  25. 25.

    See also the chapter by Alexander von Lünen in this book for a discussion on this issue; Alexi Baker and Detlev Mares/Wolfgang Moschek also discuss this briefly in their respective chapters.

  26. 26.

    See, for example, Margary (1973) and Talbert and Elliott (2010).

  27. 27.

    See Ortenberg (1990) and Masschaele (1993). Other useful resources for this include Matthews (2007) and Renouard (1968).

  28. 28.

    Bedos-Rezak (1994, 322). Mindful that these documents present methodological issues in their own right, due to the conscious and discriminate editing of their compilers and the process of copying, cartularies are nevertheless an extraordinary resource for a time period in which dense records do not survive (Cf. Guyotjeannin et al. (1993) and Kosto and Winroth (2002)).

  29. 29.

    A process recently studied and re-dated by Le Jan (2000, 58).

  30. 30.

    Recent computer technology has been used to help date medieval records, such as one strand of the Documents of Early England Data Set (DEEDS) project; see, for example, Spencer (2002).

  31. 31.

    On creating historical gazetteers, see Mostern and Johnson (2008) and Mostern (2008).

  32. 32.

    http://www.davidrumsey.com, last accessed March 2012, see also Rumsey and Williams (2002, 16) and also http://www.oldmapsonline.org, last accessed March 2012.

  33. 33.

    Talbert (2000); for a list of the latter’s sources, see http://www.early-medieval-gis.blogspot.fr/, last accessed March 2012.

  34. 34.

    http://demo.geogarage.com/cassini/ or http://webservices.cartosphere.com/, both last accessed March 2012.

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  1. Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, UK

    Faye Taylor

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  1. , Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Lion Terrace, Buckingham Building, Portsmouth, PO1 3HE, United Kingdom

    Alexander von Lünen

  2. , Trinity College, University of Dublin, Trinity Long Room Hub, Dublin, Ireland

    Charles Travis

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Taylor, F. (2013). Mapping Miracles: Early Medieval Hagiography and the Potential of GIS. In: von Lünen, A., Travis, C. (eds) History and GIS. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5009-8_8

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