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FROM THE SCHOLARLY EDITION TO VISUALIZATION: RE-USINGENCODED DATA FOR HISTORICAL RESEARCH

MALTE REHBEIN

Abstract This paper reports from the perspective of a historian who isinvestigating an early medieval manuscript, aiming at opening it up for furtherresearch and exploring its location in space, time, and intellectual context. Themanuscript in question and the texts it carries show a complex, interwovennetwork of intra- and intertextual relations and the paper argues that onlya combination, provided by computational means as the methodological key,of two usually distinct research approaches, namely close reading and distantreading, can deliver answers to the research questions imposed. The paperintroduces some central methods of an interdisciplinary field, commonly knownas digital humanities, in the realm of data representation (data modeling andtext encoding) as well as core applications in the realm of data presentationand analysis (digital editing and visualization). As these supportive methods areneither the starting-point for historical research nor an end-in-itself, they aremirrored against scholarly practices of both, of the early Middle Ages and ofmodern scholarship.

Keywords: medieval manuscripts, digital editing, visualization, data modeling,text encoding

1. a historian’s perspective

1.1 The Würzburg Saint Matthew

The Würzburg Saint Matthew1 is an unusual early-medieval manuscript withextensive and complex glossing and commentaries on the text of the Matthew

International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 8.1 (2014): 81–105DOI: 10.3366/ijhac.2014.0121© Edinburgh University Press 2014www.euppublishing.com/ijhac

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Gospel.2 It is part of the so called Libri Sancti Kiliani collection which belongedto the Library of the Würzburger Domstift soon after the foundation of thediocese in AD742 and which has been in possession of the Würzburg UniversityLibrary since secularization in 1803.3 With almost 200 medieval codices, LibriSancti Kiliani is a rich and important collection which offers excellent sourcesespecially in the Anglo-Saxon context, the oldest of these manuscripts datingback to the 5th century AD.4 The collection has been described as a ‘Schatzhausder deutsch-insularen Überlieferung’ and a ‘Monument von europäischemRang’5. Mälzer characterizes the library as a ‘Gebrauchsbibliothek,’6 that is, alibrary that was actively used as a place for study and teaching from its beginningin the 8th century until early modern period. The library can hence be seen as awitnesses for medieval scholarship and script over the course of the centuries.

This is particularly true for one of its oldest manuscripts, the so-calledWürzburg Saint Matthew,7 a parchment codex, 34 folios, 290×235mm, in fourgatherings that contains the text of the Matthew Gospel and interlinear andmarginal glosses in Latin language embedding some traces of Old-Irish.8 Themanuscript has been dated to the last third of the eighth century while the glossesand commentaries date to the beginning of the ninth century.9 Paleographersstate that the text of the Matthew gospel was written by an Irish scribe in Irishmajuscules, while the glosses might partly be written on the continent in Irishminuscule.10

In addition to the interlinear and marginal glosses, the Würzburg Matthewfeatures 28 cedulae,11 parchment slips of various sizes, which contain moreextensive commentaries than the glosses, mostly on the text of the Gospelbut also on other topics.12 These commentaries were written by three differentscribes but none by the scribe of the Gospel text or by the glossator. They haveprobably been added to the manuscript on the continent at a later stage. Themanuscript itself, however, was created in Ireland in the last third of the eighthcentury AD, in a period of ‘lively activity of Irish writing centres,’13 a time thatalso produced such splendid and luxurious Gospel books as the Book of Kells(early ninth century AD) in the monastic scriptoria of Ireland.

The Würzburg Matthew was probably brought to the area now known asLower Franconia and the town of Würzburg by Irish monks and missioners,maybe in the neighborhood of Clemens Scotus himself, on their peregrinatio,14

a practice not uncommon for this period.15 Indeed, the practice had significantinfluence not only for the development of the church in the Middle Ages16 butalso for ‘shaping the future civilization in Europe.’17 The text actually containsonly the Gospel following Matthew (hence the modern name), but the scribe’saddition of the words in red ink on top of folio 1r: Incipit euangelia numeroquatuor Matheus Marcus Lucas Iohannis, suggests that the manuscript waslikely planned as a book containing the other three canonical Gospels as well.The text of Matthew is complete (all 28 chapters), but the glossing ends suddenly

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with chapter 16, which indicates that neither the scribe of the textbook itself whointended to include all four Gospels nor its glossator ever finished their works.

1.2 Medieval Scholarly Practice

The main text of the Würzburg Matthew is characterized by generous spacebetween the lines and in the margins; space on the manuscript pages that waslater used by a different scribe to include explanations (glossing) of singlewords or passages of the main text. As one can assume that this space was leftblank intentionally by the scribe of the Gospel text, the Würzburg Matthew wasdesigned from the very beginning as a ‘scholarly textbook’, a manuscript forteaching and studying the text of the bible that led to ‘glosses and commentaryaccumulate in a haphazard fashion between lines, in margins and on insertedscraps of parchment.’18

This is contrary to another scholarly practice from this period which canbe observed in the Carolingian Glossed Psalters in which ‘the annotation iscomplete from the moment of production,’19 i.e., main text and commentariesare written in the same work-flow (if one allows this modern terminology) withstrict mise-en-page, ‘technically innovative’ for their time (though ‘exegeticallyconservative’), but ‘sharply distinct from the marginal and interlinear notes ina school text.’20 Kelly summarizes his findings about the Würzburg Matthew:‘The text is definitely Hiberno-Latin. All evidence points to a late eighth-century date [. . .]. It reflects all the standard Early Medieval and Hiberno-Latinexegetical practices – use of a Latin text, use of the Fathers – but it demonstratesan uncommon interest in history. This last point should prevent its relegationto nothing more than a catalogue listing; in an age of sometimes extremeallegorizing, this commentator strove for balance and perspective.’21 In thefollowing, I would like to illustrate this scholarly practice of glossing andcommenting along three examples: an interlinear gloss, a macaronic gloss and acommentary by compilation.

1.2.1 The Interlinear Gloss

The Würzburg Matthew follows the text of the Vulgate. On folio 1r of the man-uscript, for instance, we read about the genealogy of Christ: Iudas autem genuitPhares et Zaram de Thamar. Phares autem genuit Esrom. Esrom autem genuitAram (‘and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the fatherof Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram,’ Matt. 1:3).22 Christ, as we knowfrom Matthew, was seen in the male descent of Abraham and David, and threetimes fourteen generations are described in Matt. 1:2–16 until the birth of Iesusqui vocatur Christus. This genealogy basically consists of a chain of Hebrewnames but unlike the Latin language of the base text, Hebrew was apparently

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not known to the glossator and/or his readership or audience. In the temporal andgeographic space of the production and usage of the manuscript, Hebrew namesrequired an explanation in order to make their meaning understood.

The example given here illustrates how the glossator explains the name ofEsrom (Hezron), father of Aram (Ram) in Matt. 1:3. The explanation was likelyfound in Jerome, one the major patristic authorities referred to in that time,who wrote a book on the interpretation of Hebrew names (Liber interpretationisHebraicorum nominum)23. Jerome explains Esrom using the words sagitam vidit(he has seen an arrow) and the glossator of the Würzburg Matthew puts thisinterpretation as an interlinear gloss in the empty space above the word ‘Esrom’.Whoever used and read the manuscript after the glossing was completed couldthen read the Bible text as Phares autem genuit Esrom (.i. [id est] sagitam vidit).

This technique of glossing and its practical arrangement in form of interlinearor marginal explanations is widely used in the Würzburg Matthew as well asin other comparable manuscripts. The technique is used for explaining places,events and names (locus, tempus, persona) as well as for specific words orexpressions in Latin that required further explanations as well as for exegeticalcommentaries on the meaning of the Bible that are in style and content following‘closely the Irish pattern established by Bischoff.’24

1.2.2 A Macaronic Gloss and Early-medieval Markup

A commentary on one of the cedulae picks up Matt. 27:26 (‘Then he releasedfor them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified’)and discusses the scourging of Jesus Christ in the context of his crucification.The commentator explains why Jesus was additionally scourged (flagillatum) inspite of the fact that Pilate had not believed him to be guilty of anything evil(Matt. 27:23):

Iesum flagillatum .i. signum dilse cimbeto quomodo innocens a sanguineiusti qui eum flagillatum tradidit; sed sciendum est Romanis legibusministrasse quibus mos est ut qui crucifigitur prius flagillis uerberetur(f. 23ar)

Jesus was scourged because of the Roman law (Romanis legibus), thecommentator argues in the second part (sed sciendum. . . ) of his explanation bywhich it is custom (mos) to scourge everyone prior to crucification. In the firstpart where the lemma Iesum flagillatum is picked up, the commentator explainswhy Pilate considers himself being innocent (innocens ego sum a sanguine iusti,Matt. 27:24): a sign (signum) that is dilse cimbeto, Old-Irish words meaning ‘acaptive’s due’.25

In the context of this paper is not of primary interest to discuss the use of Old-Irish (the Würzburg Matthew contains five such passages)26 and the function

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Figure 2. Sample from Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M.p.th.f.61, folio 23ar,showing a parchment slip with a comment on Matt. 27:26 and the macaronic glossin Old-Irish. Reproduced by kind permission of Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg.© Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg.

of bilingual glossing.27 But it is the way by which the scribe indicates wordsin a language different from the rest and makes this explicit to himself andhis readers. Figure 2 shows how the two words in Old-Irish dilse cimbeto aremarked by four horizontal dashes placed above them, and these strokes are notthe common abbreviation signals but a form of markup to make the reader awareof the use of a different language28 – an indication that the Würzburg Matthewwas written with a particular readership in mind. The manuscript gives us moreexamples of such early-medieval markup. For instance, some of the externalreferences (such as Origines, Jerome) which the commentators used for theircompilations (see below) are explicitly indicated to the reader, often at themargin, as para-texts clearly distinguishable from the content. This system ofmarking up had become a typical practice.29

1.2.3 Compilation

On folio 1a, the commentator asks a question about the marital status of Mary:Quaeritur cur non de semplici uirgine sed desponsata conceptus est Christus?Why, he asks rhetorically, is Christ not born to a simple virgin (simplex virgo)

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but instead to an engaged woman (desponsata)? He does not give the answerhimself but refers back to patristic authorities. He starts with Jerome: Id est[de] tribus causis ut Hieronymus dicit and repeats what Jerome has writtenabout this question.30 But the commentator does not end with Jerome’s opinion;rather, he pursues answers to this inquiry, virtually asking other authoritiesby using his source texts and compiling an extensive discussion around thequestion of Mary’s marital status. The commentator refers to twelve differentpassages overall (from eight source texts by seven authors),31 some of which hemakes explicit (such as the above mentioned Jerome), while leaving others to beelucidated by modern scholars.

The sources have apparently been known, directly or indirectly, to thecommentator. They form an intertextual space (not necessarily his library,though)32 out of which he brings new light into this discussion for either himself(if we regard the cedulae as personal notebooks) or his readership. ‘The glossesform a spectrum, ranging from excerpts from patristic sources (sometimesattributed) to commentary that can be described as original and creative,’ Cahillstates.33 But the function of the cedulae remains unclear. Due to their ephemeralnature, they usually have not survived from the early Middle Ages34 and wedo not have many extant examples witnessing this practice. However, takingpersonal notes in such manner is not an invention of the 8th century as we alreadyknow from Pliny the Elder that he extensively used commentarii (commentariuscan be translated with ‘note’ or ‘notebook’), i.e. excerpts he made and he usedfor writing his Historia Naturalis.35

In case of the Würzburg Matthew, the cedulae might also function as notes inorder to prepare a new commentary on Matthew such as the one by HrabanusMaurus (see below). In any case, glosses and commentaries allow the modernscholar to gain deep insight into the scholarly practice of the early Middle Agesand into the spaces of knowledge of writers and their readers.

1.3 Research Challenges

Cahill describes the Würzburg Matthew as ‘not a tiny bundle but a complicatedjumble.’36 More than 40 different source texts used in the glosses andcommentaries have been attributed so far, leading to an interwoven networkof inter-textual relations. McGurk additionally attests that the mise-en-page ofthe manuscript is in ‘a haphazard fashion,’37 leaving the modern scholar with acomplex system of intra-textual relations in which the reference from lemma togloss (and vice versa) is not always obvious even with the support of signes derenvoi which the scribes occasionally used.

From the research perspective of a modern scholar, Most states: ‘If weconsider the aims and dynamics of commentary, it seems clear that one of itscentral goals – even if not its only one, but perhaps not even an indispensable

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one – is the elucidation of a text by some other author. It is worth asking (1)whose text is elucidated, (2) for whom, (3) by whom, (4) where, and (5) why.’38

I would like to add to Most’s general list of research questions on commentaries:(6) how is the elucidation put into practice and what are the scriber’s techniques,(7) what is the knowledge that is processed into the commentary, and (8) howdoes the library the commentator uses look like. Answers to these questions leadto new insight into the knowledge of the Würzburg commentators. To begin,I approach them with a method which I will outline below.

Apart from generally opening up this manuscript for research, there are histor-ical puzzles around the Würzburg Matthew that have not been solved yet and thatprimarily deal with the location of the manuscript in space, time and intellectualcontext, e.g. what are the commentators’ main interests: theology or – as Kellysuggests – history?39 A very important question in this context that has beendiscussed by scholars for a long time deals with the relation (if there is any atall) between the Würzburg manuscript and Hrabanus Maurus’ (c.780–856) com-mentary on the Matthew Gospel (Expositio in Matthaeum)40. That the Würzburgcommentaries are closely related to (or even written by) Hraban had beensuggested very early by Oegg41 and research had followed Oegg’s suggestiononly until Bischoff’s seminal turning points.42 Bischoff refuted any assumptionthat the Würzburg manuscript had influenced Hrabanus Maurus employing pale-ographic and philological evidence.43 While most researchers accept this analy-sis,44 Gorman has more recently refuted Bischoff’s theory stating that in the earlyMiddle Ages ‘the evidence for exegetical activity in Ireland is practically non-existent.’45 This would in turn question Ireland as the intellectual origin of theWürzburg Matthew and put the manuscript back in closer relation to HrabanusMaurus’ commentary. Gorman himself, however, has heavily been criticized inhis approach, and his view has not received general acceptance.46 More recently,however, Cahill has put at least one of the commentary slips into a possibleintellectual relation to Hrabanus47 but without delivering the final evidence.48

A proper and comprehensive exploration of intertextual relations seem to bethe key to answering these questions, and it is my hope that by combining twoscientific approaches to text(s) – close reading and distant reading – one of thetwo controversial opinions can finally be verified. This requires investigating in-terwoven data on a large-scale and can be achieved only in the digital medium.49

2. critical editing in a digital environment

2.1 Digital Editing

Traditionally, opening up primary sources such as the Würzburg Matthew forfurther research is done by the common and well-established method of scholarlyediting. A scholarly edition is an instrument for close reading, for thorough

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analysis of texts as a whole or direct access to text passages in question.Within the digital medium, neither scholarly editions as instruments nor closereading as a method have disappeared but they have been transformed and arecomplemented by the capabilities of information and computing technology withits capabilities of dealing with large sets of data, of creating multi-dimensionalcross-linking, of providing dynamic, interactive outputs and visualizations, andby the omnipresence of the data.

Generally, the digital medium is nowadays appropriate if not natural notonly for preparing but essentially for presenting and publishing the edition.The advantages that the digital approach offers have widely been discussed,50

and they are particularly valid for medieval glosses and commentaries withtheir complex intra- and intertextual structures. Alternatively, hybrid editions(print and digital) should be considered for publication as Bergmann proposesespecially for glosses.51 This is a technique that is increasing in practice.

The Würzburg Matthew is due for a new scholarly edition. Kelly statesabout the editio princeps52: ‘In 1954 Bischoff criticized Köberlin’s edition for‘serious omissions’ (mit schweren Mängeln) and called the reproduction ‘faulty’(fehlerhaft). Clearly a critical edition is a sine qua non for future work.’53

Critically editing the Würzburg Matthew in the 21st century, however, goes astep further beyond mere reproduction of the text, its commentaries and theirsources. In addition to providing the text, the purpose of the new edition that Iam currently working on is to reflect on the scholarly practice of early-medievalscholarship and what is more: to give insight into the spaces of knowledge of theglossator and the commentators.

‘Digital editing’ reflects on the traditional method of scholarly editing and notonly transforms it from book-based publication into a new medium, but developsit further by complementing and eventually changing the traditional practice withthe capabilities of the digital medium as outlined above. In the following, I wouldlike to discuss digital editing as one of the cores of development and applicationof digital methods and tools for humanities’ research.

2.2 Data Modeling and Encoding

The core of any digital humanities project – and digital editions in particular – is,however, constituted by a process of transformation into computational data.This transformation, or ‘transcoding’54, is always based on formulae or datamodels which comprehend not only the historical objects we study (such asmanuscripts) but also the way we study them. This is to be regarded along thecomplete ‘value chain’ of research: from the digitization of primary sources(data acquisition), through the analytical, e.g. hermeneutic, central aspect ofour research (information analysis), to the publication of its results (scientificcommunication). The analytic aspect, especially, needs to be modeled into the

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digital medium, too. However, one can observe at this point that fundamentalresearch in the Digital Humanities has followed a more technology-drivendiscussion and not sufficiently drawn attention to the impact that methods,theories, practices and intellectual schools of the Humanities should have onthe design of the digital medium.

For more than twenty years, an appropriate model for both representing data(from the manuscript) and expressing what we think about it and why (i.e.,our analytical research) in a formalized way has been constituted around thepractice of text encoding. Text encoding is a process of transformation by whichwe model what we see on the manuscript and how we interpret it in a digitalformat: ‘Before they can be studied with the aid of machines, texts must beencoded in a machine-readable form. Methods for this transcription are called,generically, “text encoding schemes”; such schemes must provide mechanismsfor representing the characters of the text and its logical and physical structure[. . . ] ancillary information achieved by analysis or interpretation [may also beadded].’55 Text encoding also allows us to transform scholarly practices of thepast (glossing, commenting, compiling, marking) into something computable,and this is essential for understanding the Würzburg Matthew.

Encoding is not necessarily a method known only to the Humanities, butthe Humanities have developed a widely accepted model: guidelines and a so-called schema, developed and maintained by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI),containing a comprehensive vocabulary and set of rules and constraints to makeexplicit (markup) features of text. Markup is, however, not an invention of theDigital Humanities. It has been a common practice for centuries as the exampleof the macaronic gloss in the Würzburg Matthew itself illustrates. The indicationof the words in a different language (dilse cimbeto) by vertical strokes followsthe same principle as the modern approach: it makes explicit a particular featureof the text.

The TEI-model56 is far more comprehensive, of course, and is capableof treating and encoding texts from various perspectives: as a sequence ofcharacters (signifiers), as units and their meanings, in its inner (logical) structure,by layout and topology (codicology) of their carriers (manuscripts, typescripts,inscriptions, etc.), within their (chronological and intellectual) processes ofwriting, production and reception, in their contexts including intertexts andparatexts, in relation of text and image, etc. The TEI-model has been developedin order to facilitate the creation of digital representations of texts. It doesnot immanently address the human reader, or presentation of texts. Hence,encoding is not thinkable – save the exception of archival purposes – without itscounterpart decoding. Decoding is the reverse process of encoding: it convertsthe code symbols used by the encoding ‘back into information understandableby a receiver.’57 In the context of digital editing which we discuss here, decodingserves to create human readable output in various formats. During the decoding

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within in a digital editing process, the encoded texts are transformed so thatthey can be used in the required reading interface(s), sometimes dynamicallyand ‘on-the-fly’, following user interaction, sometimes statically for printed orhybrid output.

The following example is taken from the Würzburg Matthew to exemplifythe role of text encoding in creating this edition along three use-cases: (1)structuring the textual data, (2) marking up intra-textual links, and (3) markingup inter-textual references. There are, naturally, many more ‘features’ of thismanuscript, such as editorial interventions, annotations, aspects of codicologyand paleography that are encoded for this edition. But by studying these threeprincipal characteristics of the Würzburg Matthew, it might be illustrated besthow encoding can help creating the edition and its different forms of output.

Figure 358 shows a simplified sample from the encoding of the WürzburgMatthew. It represents the text of Matt. 1:3, hence part of the genealogy of Christmentioning Esrom as one of his ancestors together with the explanation (sagitamvidit) of this name. It is encoded employing the data model provided by the TEIwhich itself is (technologically) based on XML (Extensible Markup Language).XML is a meta markup language. It defines a general set of rules for encodingdata (not necessarily textual) and provides a syntax which can be used to buildmore specific rules and vocabularies in order to design an encoding model orschema for particular purposes. The TEI is such a purpose-based model. It isdesigned for electronic texts in general, as outlined above, but can and should beadapted59 to the needs of individual projects.60

The XML syntax stipulates the hierarchical use of elements and attributesto encode information bound to a sequence of characters. In line 4, forinstance, we encode (or mark up) the word ‘Esrom’ using the element termto indicate that ‘Esrom’ is term (a lemma) that is glossed by the glossator:< term > Esrom < /term > . The portion of the text that we want to encodespecifically, in this case ‘Esrom’, is surrounded by a start-tag which carries thename of the element and a corresponding end-tag, both indicating the boundariesof this specific encoding. The encoding is detailed further by the use of attributes(here: xml:id and target) which carry additional information.61 I will return to thistopic later.

Encoding structural information. In the context of the Würzburg Matthew,the encoding structures the data. As one can see from the code example above,the data model in principle employs four hierarchical levels. The first two levelsfollow the (modern) inner structure of the Gospel, its division into chaptersand verses. The element div is used for this purpose and by characterizingit further using the attribute type, the kind of the level in question (eitherLatin capitulum for chapter or versus for verse) is made explicit. Note thatall information is inherited, i.e. a verse always belongs to a chapter and takesover for instance its number: < div type = ‘versus’ n = ‘3’ > would encode this

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verse as the third verse within this (first) chapter < div type = ‘capitulum’n = ‘1’ > . The third level of encoding uses the element ab (anonymous block,a generic structural element) and allows to distinguish between the main text(type = ‘textus’), the glosses (type = ‘glossaeInterlineares’), and the commen-taries (type = ‘commentarii’). The fourth level occurs only within the glosses orcommentaries whenever (which is often the case) one verse of the Gospel textis glossed or commented more than once. Each gloss or commentary is encodedusing the element gloss.

Encoding intra-textual links. The medieval glossator of the WürzburgMatthew usually puts the explanation of words or text passages in proximity tothe lemma, mostly into the empty space directly above it. Sometimes, however,when there is no sufficient space, he puts the commentary somewhere else, forinstance in the margin of the manuscript and uses signes de renvoi to make thelink between gloss and lemma clear. Digital encoding works in a similar way: itfirst makes both textual units, i.e., the lemma and its gloss(es), identifiable for thecomputer by assigning them unique identifiers. This is expressed by the attributexml:id. The data model further designates the attribute target with the samevalue for pointing bi-directionally from one to the other: the target of the glosscorresponds with the xml:id of the lemma in question.62

Encoding inter-textual references. The content of the gloss (sagitam vidit) istaken from an external source, Jerome’s book of Hebrew names.63 The elementref makes this fact (or better: this editorial interpretation) explicit. It furtheremploys a typology for classifying the kind of reference (type = ‘patristic’)64

and it encodes where this reference is taken from. The attribute cRef contains acanonical description of this reference in form of a uniform resource identifier(URI). This is a naming convention consistently used throughout the wholeproject. In this example, HI stands for Jerome (Hieronymus), nom is anabbreviation for the work in question (Liber interpretationis Hebraicorumnominum), 61.9 identifies a passage within the edition of this work (page 61,line 9) which we (the modern editors) refer to (CCSL 72). Information on howto resolve these URI’s and how to address the source texts outside the immediatescope of this project is described in the meta data section of the encoding.To avoid redundancy and to facilitate consistency, this is done only once foreach work.

2.3 Decoding

Text encoding is a method for creating representations of historical data ina computer-readable and processable format. Digital editing encompasses thecreation of an interface which provides access to the text constituted by theeditor, annotations, contextual information and – if possible – digital images ofthe manuscript(s). This presentation of the encoded data in a form which is

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Figure 4. Würzburg Matthew digital edition; prototype (linear text view).

readable and usable by the human researcher requires a process of decoding asdefined above. For the Würzburg Matthew digital edition, decoding is technicallyrealized by using the database query language XQuery and by the ExtensibleStylesheet Transformation Language.65 Without going into details here, it isworth mentioning that these technologies are capable of creating differentoutputs for different purposes, even dynamically on users’ request. Figures 4and 5 illustrate two prototype outputs of the data (views), both intended tobecome integral part of the Würzburg Matthew digital edition.

The first view, Figure 4, resembles a traditional edition. It is organized alongthe structure of the Gospel, presents the text in a linear way, puts glossesand commentaries underneath their lemmata, and presents annotations andreferences separately. It enhances the traditional view and functionality of anedition, though, by highlighting areas of interests at the user’s request (such asthe typology of the glosses) or by directly linking to referenced works. To createthe second view, the same encoded data is used, but it is decoded in a way toallow a completely different form of output, one that gives the user a structuredaccess to the data and emphasizes not the linear presentation of the Gospel text,but the glosses and their lemmata. This spreadsheet-like format is motivated by

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Figure 5. Würzburg Matthew digital edition; prototype (structured view).

traditional annexes (such as the index auctorum in the Corpus Christianorumseries), but unlike indexes or concordances in printed editions, the data hereis sortable and searchable and, what is more, it always stays within its textualcontext (for instance of gloss and corresponding lemma) and directly links torelated texts, be they internal or external.

3. visualization

Digitally editing a manuscript such as the Würzburg Matthew is a natural stepfor opening up the text for future research. The edition alone, however, is notsufficient as it does not eliminate the complexity of the interwoven networkof intertextual relations. In order to meet the research challenges, especially tolocate the codex in space, time, and intellectual context, the encoded data needsto be analyzed further. This analysis can be undertaken by employing anothercore application of the Digital Humanities: information visualization.

Information visualization can be understood as the ‘use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of abstract data to amplifycognition,’66 a ‘method for seeing the unseen,’67 its primary objective being

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to ‘gain insight into an information space.’68 Haber observes three functionsof visualization for cultural studies: illustrating the researcher’s narrative(prevailing), presenting results of research (as in sciences), or serving asa methodological element.69 Information visualization has been indeed usedwidely in the (Digital) Humanities recently, though mostly for static presentationof results. While information visualization (if used critically) is often desirablealong the researcher’s narrative, it hardly takes advantage of the potential ofdigital media and computing technology. Especially in the case of complex,interwoven networks of large-scale data, interactive tools are required andinformation visualization can function as the crucial methodological element foranalyses. They ‘can help us to see the patterns, and put together the pieces ofthe jigsaw, from the chaotic plethora of information that confronts us about partsof the past.’70 Research so far has paid attention to this with the slogan ‘data-driven history’ but employs it only for data that is per se highly structured andpredestined for statistics such as census, serial sources or prosopography.

Concerning historical (or literary) data, we can observe two major trends:distant reading71 and close reading. Both are supported by methods of the DigitalHumanities; information visualization usually addresses distant reading whileclose reading is supported by digital editing. In an interview with the NewYork Times, Grafton states that ‘these tools have enormous implications [. . . ]in their ability to reveal unexpected patterns and associations in the historicalrecord [They. . . ] can pick up big changes [and] you can’t do this by using older,conventional means of reading books and taking notes.’72

For the Würzburg Matthew these tools can be applied to visualize theintertextual relations and to map the resulting intellectual network. Theunderlying model for this network is based on a graph representation into whichthe encoded data is automatically transformed. Graphs are, mathematicallyspeaking, a collection of nodes (or vertices) together with a collection of edgesthat connect pairs of nodes. Graphs are generally quite powerful for historicalresearch, e.g. for visualizing historical (social) networks73 or for expressingtextual variation.74

To simplify the idea of graphs for analytic and visualization purposes,we might regard textual units from the Würzburg Matthew (glosses andcommentaries) as well as textual units from the referenced works as nodes in thegraph. Any relation between them is considered as an edge. Figure 6 representsthe interlinear gloss with the explanation of the name of Esrom that we havealready seen in the encoding. It models it as a pair of nodes which is connected byan edge. The edge represents the inter-texual relation between two textual unitswhich are themselves modeled as nodes: the gloss in the Würzburg Matthewon the left and the source text from Jerome on the right. The edge is furtherqualified or attributed by additional information about the type of relation; in thiscase it is a verbatim, implicit citation. The sum of all textual units and relations

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Figure 7. Snapshot of the visual representation of the Würzburg Matthewintertextual space, highlighting the relation between Jerome’s Book of Hebrewnames and the commentary on Matt. 1.

among them in form of nodes and edges make up the graph representation of theWürzburg Matthew’s intertextual space.75

The prototypes presented here are created using the open-source softwareGephi, ‘an interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds ofnetworks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs’.76 To allowGephi to operate on the TEI-based encoded data of the Würzburg Matthewedition, it needs to be transformed into a graph representation format, such asGEXF (Graph Exchange XML Format) which is XML-based and in which nodesand edges are described in a straight-forward way. Hence, the data is decoded forthe visualization software which in turn decodes it for the human reader to createinteractive visualizations.

Figure 7 shows a visual snapshot of the intertexual space of the WürzburgMatthew, highlighting the strong influence Jerome’s Liber InterpretationisHebraicorum Nominum had on the glossing of Matt. 1. Due to its interactivenature as an analytical tool, the visualization allows further exploration of thisspace of various kinds. Such software usually provides functionality whichencompasses zooming, panning, shifting focus, filtering, running different

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Figure 8. The intertextual intersection between the Würzburg Matthew andHrabanus Maurus’ commentary on Matthew.

algorithms, exploring statistics and metrics, and layouting: ‘the user interactswith the representation, manipulates the structures, shapes and colors to revealhidden properties. The goal is to help data analysts to make hypotheses,intuitively discover patterns, isolate structure singularities or faults during datasourcing. It is a complementary tool to traditional statistics, as visual thinkingwith interactive interfaces is now recognized to facilitate reasoning.’77

In the New York Times report, Grafton continues by stating that the ‘newanalytical techniques won’t replace the close reading and interpretation oftext that is the province of scholars.’78 Hence, both are required: firstly, only‘distant analysis’79 allows the recognition of relevant pieces from the vast andcomplex network of extant data and information. And this provides, secondly,the foundation out of which the researcher, by close reading and hermeneuticanalysis, is able to draw profound conclusions about the past. While most DigitalHumanities projects focus exclusively on one or the other, either on visualization

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and distant reading80 or on close reading such as digital editing, the WürzburgMatthew project bridges the gap between the two approaches.

Technically, the transformation from TEI into GEXF is a unidirectionalprocess (i.e. it cannot be reverted without loss of information), and is aspecialized decoding for use in visualization software. Yet, information aboutthe textual units is conveyed through the transformation which allows the userto jump back from the visualization into the digital edition. This conceptionof a simultaneous close and distant reading in an enhanced hermeneutic loopfacilitates what is demanded by Grafton. Figure 8 exemplifies this. It shows thecombined intertextual spaces of the Würzburg Matthew and another text thatwe have already discussed, Hrabanus Maurus’ Expositio. The algorithms of thevisualization software automatically arrange and clusters sources commonly andfrequently referred to by both commentaries. The researcher can now explorethis intersection between the two main nodes (indicated in blue) in greaterdetail. Provision of direct links to the text passages in question facilitates theexamination of these texts thoroughly by close reading and interpretation.

In order to generate reliable results, however, much more data has to be takeninto account, something which is beyond the scope of the Würzburg Mattheweditorial project alone. But it does set a research agenda for the future: a map ofmedieval knowledge from which one could reason out, for instance, the locationof exegetical practice and creativity in space and time.

4. summary and outlook

Areas and limits of scholarly thinking and practice constitute a space ofknowledge81 in a specific context which can be a scholar itself, his or her specificwork, a school or also a zeitgeist. The case of the Würzburg Matthew hasshown that spaces of knowledge can manifest themselves not only physically(as in manuscripts or books), but also through the amount and character ofintertextual references which are witnesses for typical practices of medievalscholarship. By mapping this system of references, the intellectual network inwhich scholars gathered and operated with data and information is becomingvisual and analyzable.

Investigating such spaces of knowledge leads not only to a betterunderstanding of the history of scholarship, it also shows the limits of thinkingitself and gives insight into what people of the past knew and could know.Especially in the Middle Ages in which knowledge physically depended onthe possession of or accesses to rare codices, thoughts and comments aretransmitted by scholars to contemporary thinkers or to posterity by typicalpractices of medieval scholarship such as writing, commenting, or glossing.For a contemporary study of the history of ideas, analyzing the system ofintertextual references of the past is the key to a better understanding of

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knowledge acquisition, creation and transmission. This requires a bird’s-eyeview on the complexity of such a network as well as in-depth studies. Bycombining these two, often distinct, methodological approaches to the same setof data, the digital medium provides this facility for research. Typical questionsfrom micro studies can now be answered in a totally new dimension, whichallows for the consideration of far larger areas than before, and facilitates thetracing of development of knowledge in space, time and intellectual context.

end notes1

Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M. p. th. f. 61. The research outlined here has beengenerously funded by a Marie Curie European Reintegration Grant (European Union ResearchFramework Programme FP7). I would also like to express my thanks to Hans-Günter Schmidt(University Library Würzburg), Anthony Harvey (Royal Irish Academy), and Dáibhí ÓCróinín (National University of Ireland, Galway) for supporting the project. This researchwould not be possible without the fundamental groundwork of late Michael Cahill.

2See D. Ó Cróinín, ‘Mo-Sinnu Moccu Min and the Computus of Bangor’, Peritia 1 (1982),281–295; J. F. Kelly, ‘The Würzburg Saint Matthew’, Würzburger Diözesangeschichtsblätter55 (1993), 5–12; and especially Michael Cahill, ‘The Würzburg Matthew: Status Quaestionis’,Peritia 16 (2002), 1–25, for recent research on this manuscript.

3H. Thurn, ‘Die Würzburger Dombibliothek des frühen Mittelalters’, WürzburgerDiözesangeschichtsblätter 54 (1992), 55–67.

4G. Mälzer and H. Thurn, eds., Die Bibliothek des Würzburger Domstifts: 742–1803, eineAusstellung der Universitäts-Bibliothek Würzburg 20. 10. - 30. 11. 1988 (Würzburg, 1988),provides insight into the richness of the Libri Sancti Kiliani. The collection is currentlybeing digitized (Virtuelle Bibliothek Würzburg, Libri sancti Kiliani digital, http://www.libri-kiliani.de/, last accessed 30 August 2012).

5G. Mälzer, ‘Die Bibliothek des Würzburger Domstifts’ in Mälzer and Thurn, eds., DieBibliothek des Würzburger Domstifts, 21–38. Cited here at 22.

6Mälzer, ‘Die Bibliothek’, 34.

7Kelly, ‘The Würzburg Saint Matthew’, seems to be the first to use this name for the manuscriptin English research literature. Cahill, ‘The Würzburg Matthew’ has picked up Kelly’s ideaof naming the manuscript while earlier research (B. Bischoff and J. Hofmann, Libri sanctiKyliani: Die Würzburger Schreibschule und die Dombibliothek im VIII. und IX. Jahrhundert(Würzburg, 1952); B. Bischoff, Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der lateinischen Exegeseim Frühmittelalter (Sacris erudiri 6, no. 2, 1954), 189–281; Ó Cróinín, ‘Mo-Sinnu MoccuMin’ referred only to the shelf mark. K. Köberlin, Eine Würzburger Evangelienhandschrift(Augsburg, 1891)) titled his transcription of M.p.th.f.61 less specified ‘Eine WürzburgerEvangelienhandschrift’ (a Gospel manuscript from Würzburg), following G. Schepss, Dieältesten Evangelienhandschriften der Würzburger Universitätsbibliothek (Würzburg, 1887):‘Die ältesten Evangelienhandschriften der Würzburger Universitätsbibliothek’ (the oldestGospel manuscripts from the Würzburg University Library).

8Editio princeps: Köberlin, Eine Würzburger Evangelienhandschrift. Catalogued in: H. Thurn,Die Pergamenthandschriften der ehemaligen Dombibliothek (Wiesbaden, 1984), 44–45;Bischoff and Hofmann, Libri sancti Kyliani; J. F. Kenney, The sources for the early historyof Ireland, 2 vols, Records of civilization (New York, 1929) §55, CLA 9.1415, 1416, BCLL§§288, 768, 790, Patrick McGurk (1994, §79); F. Stegmüller, Repertorium biblicum mediiaevi, 7 (Matriti, 1961); G. Mälzer and H. Thurn, eds., Die Bibliothek des WürzburgerDomstifts: 742–1803 (Würzburg, 1988), 59. A much earlier description can be found by

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J. A. Oegg, Versuch einer Korographie der Erz- u. Großherzogl. Haupt- u. ResidenzstadtWürzburg (Würzburg, 1808).

9Thurn, Die Pergamenthandschriften, 44–45.

10Bischoff and Hofmann, Libri sancti Kyliani.

11According to Cahill, ‘The Würzburg Matthew’. Older descriptions state the number of thesecedulae with 30 while Oegg, Versuch einer Korographie, 471, reports of ‘. . . lots of biggerand smaller pieces or leaves, partly stitched, partly glued. . . ’ (. . . eine Menge größerer undkleinerer Zettel oder Blättchen, theils eingeheftet, theils angeleimt. . . ) and gives the numberof these pieces with 128. Although it is possible that a large number of the cedulae is lost, notraces have yet been found.

12Such as No. 29 on the computus (Ó Cróinín, ‘Mo-Sinnu Moccu Min’).

13B. Bischoff, Manuscripts and libraries in the age of Charlemagne, Reprinted, Cambridgestudies in palaeography and codicology, 1 (Cambridge, 1995), 13.

14L. E. von Padberg, Christianisierung im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2006), 26–27.

15H. Birkhan, Bausteine zum Studium der Keltologie (Wien, 2005), 379.

16Padberg, Christianisierung, 46.

17Bischoff, Manuscripts and libraries, 12.

18P. McGurk, ‘The oldest manuscripts of the Latin Bible’, in R. Gameson, ed., The Earlymedieval Bible: Its production, decoration and use, Cambridge studies in palaeography andcodicology, 2 (Cambridge, 1994), 1–23. Cited here at 4–5.

19M. Gibson, ‘Carolingian Glossed Psalters’, Gameson, The Early medieval Bible, 78–100.Cited here at 79.

20Gibson, Carolingian Glossed Psalters, 79.

21Kelly, ‘The Würzburg Saint Matthew’, 12.

22All English translations of the Bible are taken from the English Standard Version (ESV).

23CCSL 72.

24D. Ó Cróinín, ‘Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M. p. th. f. 61 and Hiberno-Latin exegesisin the VIIIth century’, in A. Lehner, ed., Lateinische Kultur im VIII. Jahrhundert: Traube-Gedenkschrift (St. Ottilien, 1989), 209–216. Cited here at 211; Bischoff, Wendepunkte.

25eDIL c.110, l.64. Liber Questionum in Evangeliis constitutes the same compilation without theOld-Irish words: IESUM FLAGILLATUM. Quomodo innocens a sanguine usti qui flagellatum tradit?(J. Rittmueller, ed., Liber qvestionvm in evangeliis. Corpvs Christianorvm Series Latina 108(Turnhout, 2003), 438).

26Cahill, ‘The Würzburg Matthew’, 15.

27D. Ó Cróinín, ‘The earliest Old Irish glosses’, in R. Bergmann, E. Glaser and C. Moulin-Fankhänel, eds., Mittelalterliche volkssprachige Glossen: Internationale Fachkonferenz desZentrums für Mittelalterstudien der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2. bis 4. August1999, Germanistische Bibliothek, 13 (Heidelberg, 2001), 7–31. Cited here at 19.

28Ó Cróinín, ‘Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek’, 215.

29Stansbury attributes this invention to Bede (M. Stansbury, ‘Early-Medieval BiblicalCommentaries, Their Writers and Readers’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 33 (1999), 49–92.Cited here at 73).

30As of Hieronymus Christ is not born to a simple virgin but to an engaged woman (owntranslation): ‘first reason to protect, through the genealogy of Joseph, the origin of Mary;second reason so that she would not be stoned by the Jews as an adulteress; third reason tohave the husband’s solace while fleeing to Egypt [. . . ]’ (i. causa ut per genealogiam Ioseph[i]origo Mariae seruaretur; ii. causa ne lapidaretur a Iudeis quasi adultera; iii. causa ut inAegiptum fugens haberet solacium uiri).

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31Hieronymus Stridonsis, Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum and In Mattheum;so-called Ambrosiaster, Questiones; Faustus Riensis, De Spiritu Sancto; AugustinusHipponensis, Contra Faustum; Arnobius (the younger) Conflictus cum Serapione; BedaVenerabilis, In Acta; Isidorus Hispalensis, Etymologiae.

32Lapidge discusses a hypothesis in which he envisages a scholar ‘undertaking his workof compilation from the resources of a well-stocked library amongst one of the Irishcommunities’ (M. Lapidge, ‘The origin of the Collectanea’, in M. Bayless and M. Lapidge,eds., Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae. Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, Vol. 14 (Dublin, 1998), 1–12.Cited here at 6). This might not be the case here, though. Ó Cróinín argues that thispassage might well be taken from the earlier commentary Pseudo-Theopilius of Antioch,Commentarius in IV evangelium (Ó Cróinín, ‘Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek’, 213).


34Lapidge, ‘The origin of the Collectanea’, 6.

35Stansbury, ‘Early-Medieval Biblical Commentaries’, 52.


37McGurk, ‘The oldest manuscripts of the Latin Bible’, 4–5.

38G. W. Most, ed., Commentaries, Aporemata, 4 (Göttingen, 1999), VIII.


40CCCM 174 and 174A.

41Oegg, Versuch einer Korographie, 472. Hraban’s Expositio is likely to be younger, though.

42Bischoff, Wendepunkte.

43Bischoff, Wendepunkte, 252.

44See, for instance, Ó Cróinín, ‘Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek’.

45M. Gorman, ‘A Critique of Bischoff’s Theory of Irish Exegesis: The Commentary on Genesisin Munich Clm 6302 (Wendepunkte 2)’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 7 (1997), 178–233.

46S. Weber, Iren auf dem Kontinent: Das Leben des Marianus Scottus von Regensburg und dieAnfänge der irischen ‘Schottenklöster’ (Heidelberg, 2010), 304–307.


48In this context, the relation between the Würzburg Matthew and Liber questionum in evangeliis(LQE) is also of great interest: an early eighth century ‘full-scale commentary on the Gospelaccording to Matthew, intended as a reference work for ecclesiastics who wrote, taught, orpreached’ (J. Rittmueller, ed., Liber qvestionvm in evangeliis. Corpvs Christianorvm SeriesLatina 108 (Turnhout, 2003), 11*).

49In the controversy on Bischoff’s turning points, Wright suggests to validate Bischoff’s theoryby ‘exploiting the resources of the new electronic text databases’ (C. D. Wright, ‘Bischoff’sTheory of Irish Exegesis and the Genesis Commentary in Munich clm. 6302. A Critique of aCritique’ The Journal of Medieval Latin 10 (2000), 173).

50Recently: P. Sahle, Digitale Editionsformen. Zum Umgang mit der Überlieferung unter denBedingungen des Medienwandels (Norderstedt, 2013), 3 volumes.

51R. Bergmann, ‘Editions und Forschungsaufgaben’, in R. Bergmann, ed., Die althochdeutscheund altsächsische Glossographie (Berlin, 2009), 1636–1642. Cited here at 1637.

52Köberlin, Eine Würzburger Evangelienhandschrift.


54L. Manovich, The language of new media (Cambridge, 2001), 46.

55M. Sperberg-McQueen, ‘Text Encoding and Enrichment’, in I. Lancashire, ed., The humanitiescomputing yearbook: 1989–90; a comprehensive guide to software and other resources(Oxford, 1991), 503.

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56Current version 2.1.0, LISTERV 16.0, published 18th June 2012, http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=tei-l;4d467bcc.1206, last accessed 30 August 2012.

57Wikipedia, Code, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code, last accessed 19 June 2012.

58Colors and bold fonts are not part of the encoding. They are included only to make the codesbetter understandable for the human reader.

59I say ‘should be adopted’ here as we know from model theory that every model is bound toa specific purpose and is always subjective (H. Stachowiak, Allgemeine Modelltheorie (Wien,1973)).

60In this understanding, the Würzburg Matthew project has developed its own encoding modelbased on TEI and we might regard the TEI as a ‘meta model’ and XML as a ‘meta metamodel’.

61It is important to note that XML-based documents follow a hierarchy. Any element is either asibling to another element or child. In case of the latter, all information encoded using elementsand attributes is inherited to the next (child-) level.

62The bi-directional linking looks redundant at a first glimpse, but is not. The relation betweenlemma and gloss is not always a 1:1-relation as there are lemmata with more than one gloss aswell as there are glosses commenting on more than one lemma.

63We cannot refrain from using an additional element ref in our structure as the relationbetween gloss and external references is usually not a 1:1-relation. Glosses and especiallycommentaries can be compiled out of many sources, and there are parts of glosses and glossesas a whole that cannot be attributed to an external source at all.

64This is a simplified view. The actual typology is far more complex and includes the distinctionbetween implicit and explicit usage of external sources, between the type of usage (verbatim,paraphrase etc.), and the exegetical intention (historical, anagogic etc.)

65Both are standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium.

66S. K. Card, J. D. MacKinlay and B. Shneiderman, Readings in information visualization:Using vision to think (San Francisco, 1999).

67B. McCormick, T. DeFanti and M. Brown, ‘Visualization in Scientific Computing’, ComputerGraphics 21 (1987), 1–14.

68H. Senay and E. Ignatius, ‘A knowledge-Based System for Visualisation Design’, IEEEComputer Graphics 14, 6 (1994), 36–47.

69Peter Haber, Digital past: Geschichtswissenschaft im digitalen Zeitalter (München, 2011),136.

70M. Greengrass and L. Hughes, eds., The Virtual Representation of the Past (Aldershot,2008), 2.

71F. Moretti, Graphs, maps, trees: Abstract models for a literary history (London, 2005);J. Goodwin, Reading graphs, maps & trees: Responses to Franco Moretti (Anderson, 2011).

72A. Eisenberg, ‘Avalanches of Words, Sifted and Sorted’, The New York Times, 25.03.2012.

73Historical Network Research, https://sites.google.com/site/historicalnetworkresearch/, lastaccessed 28 Jun 2012.

74M. Rehbein, ‘Multi-level variation’ in MITH, ed., Digital Humanities 2009: ConferenceAbstracts (Maryland, 2009), 11–12.

75Graph theory has developed different kinds of graphs, but the assumption that the Würzburgmanuscript ‘uses’ its older source texts and that there is no reference back makes it a directedacyclic graph. The way the graph is used in this (simplified) discussion puts the WürzburgMatthew in its center and analysis intertextual relations only from with it as an origin. In thedesign of a map of medieval knowledge (see below), the analysis will not have a single originand hence the graph will not be acyclic anymore.

76Gephi, http://gephi.org, last accessed 28 Jun 2012.

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77‘Features’, Gephi, http://gephi.org/features, last accessed 28 June 2012.

78Eisenberg, ‘Avalanches of Words, Sifted and Sorted’.

79Eisenberg, ‘Avalanches of Words, Sifted and Sorted’.

80The Republic of Letters project is an example for this: it provides interactive, visual maps ofcorrespondence during the Enlightenment but does not allow the researcher to actually read theletters (Mapping the Republic of letters, https://republicofletters.stanford.edu/, last accessed 28Jun 2012).

81The concept of ‘spaces of knowledge’ in the context of this case-study and beyond has beenjointly developed and discussed with Antonia Landois (Universität Würzburg) for whoseinsight and invaluable contribution to this research I am very grateful.

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