Register Medicorum Medii Aevi
This is a Pilot Project, funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation.
Aim
The aim of this project is to explore how, in the age of online publication, reliable information can be exchanged and exploited between researchers in different areas. It is an exercise in working out how to set up a dialogue/discussion to which a range of specialists and scholars could contribute.
We have selected the area of medieval medical knowledge, because we know that there is a a great deal of important work going on in this area, much of which is focussed on particular areas and language groups. The challenge, as we see it, is to establish a shared resource which could be used by historians of medicine in the Latin west, the Greek East, the Arab-speaking world and other adjacent cultures. We would therefore welcome responses, and contributions, from scholars in all relevant areas, in order to allow us all to explore the value of such an approach.
Introduction
In the ancient and medieval worlds medical knowledge and experience was greatly valued, and was well understood to be available from many different cultures. Doctors, and medical writings, travelled between cultures, and were sometimes valued more highly for being foreign. The relevant information is recorded in sources of many different cultures and languages. These barriers hamper our understanding of the exchange of scientific information and the progress of medical knowledge.
Over the next year we aim to investigate ways in which experts on Anglo-Saxon, Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Jewish, Latin and any other sources can share information about doctors, and medical knowledge, in the medieval period. We propose to trial an online Register, which will interoperate with online prosopographic resources and other records, and where information from paper publications can also be recorded. We want to explore how such a register would work; how incoming materials can be assessed and how scholars can be encouraged to contribute. To this end, we are planning three international meetings with interested scholars. At the end of the planning period - in summer 2011 - we will be producing a report, and an assessment of whether such an undertaking would be desirable and viable. Where we go from there will depend on the answers we receive.
Background
This proposal arises from work being done in three units at King's College London: the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, the Department of History, and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities. All three groupings are leaders in their fields. Over the last few years, each of the two Departments has worked with the Centre in the field of digital prosopography: they are responsible for the Prosopography of Anglo Saxon England (PASE), the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire, 641-867, (PBE) and the Prosopography of the Byzantine World, 1025-1180 (PBW). All three projects have been supported by the British Academy and by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The Leverhulme Trust has supported a further project (completed in 2009) to extract material for Arabic sources for PBW. The AHRC also funds two further related projects, the Clergy of the Church of England Database, and theParadox of Medieval Scotland. The focus on medical history is more recent; but it is part of developments at King's which include the creation (with Wellcome Trust funding) of a new unit for Medicine and the Arts.
Rationale
We therefore find ourselves with a unique range of experience and skills in dealing with prosopography. Over the last decades, projects of this kind have migrated from printed books, via publication on CD (PBE) to full publication online (PASE, PBW). The move from print to digital media immediately changed the possible scope of such undertakings, allowing for far more individuals to be recorded. The move to online publication brings about a further change: the user is not limited to the materials assembled by one expert, but can be directed with ease to material from other fields of study. That this is desirable became apparent with the work on the Byzantine World in the 11th and 12th centuries (PBW) a period when individuals from various cultural groups were coming into contact with one another, and moving between geographical areas. The issues were followed up at two British Academy workshops sponsored by PBW: the proceedings of the first have been published: Mary Whitby ed., Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, 1025-1204 (Oxford, 2007); Professor Judith Herrin and Dr Guillaume Saint-Guillain (visiting Newton Fellow) is editing those of the second, The Eastern Mediterranean in the Thirteenth century: identities and allegiances: Building a prosopographical methodology, held in 2007.