The SOLEMNE project is co-organising this workshop on text-reuse detection to be held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences on 5-6 March 2026.
The amount of texts available in various corpora, thanks to the many ongoing digitalisation projects, has increased immensely, and the success of HTR will only increase the amount of available texts. This means that the need to take advantage of this amount of text only increases. The ability to identify text-reuse and measure text similarity is thus more important than ever, and promises to see connections never viewed before. AI promises to make this possible.
This two-day small workshop is a continuation of the event held in 2023: Finding Connections: Using AI and DNA Sequencing to Find Similarities and Parallels in Medieval Texts, with an extended focus on general historical sources.
March 5th will be devoted to presentations of research in two sessions. In the afternoon, there will be an associated KIMAFO by William Mattingly, open to the general audience.
March 6th will be more informal and truly of a workshop nature. Two morning sessions will be devoted to work-in-progress reports, plans for the implementation of AI in various projects, experimental approaches to the problem, and discussions. In the afternoon, there will be a practical workshop focusing on the use of various AI approaches. This will be led by Martin Roček and Gleb Schmidt.
Using language modeling and the information-theoretic concept of perplexity, Friederike, Gleb, and Sven explore the influence of the Bible on early medieval canon law. We demonstrate that calculating perplexity of a corpus of canon law under a language model trained exclusively on Scripture can serve as a reliable proxy for accessing the overall linguistic similarity—stylistic, semantic, and syntactic—of canon law to the Bible. Our paper, presented at the conference on Computational Humanities Research 2025 (Luxembourg), presents the measured “biblicality” of various canon law texts, explores its chronological development, and delves into the linguistic and stylistic meaning of higher or lower “biblicality” by observing correlations between perplexity under the biblical language model and various linguistic features of canon law texts, which can be extracted from rich morpho-styntactic annotation. We hypothesise that changes in the levels of “biblicality”, clearly observable across the chronological subdivisions of the corpus, suggest that the imitation of scriptural language may have been a deliberate strategy reflecting evolving views on the role and place of Scripture in legislation. Further research is needed to trace in more detail the connection between the authoritative status of canon law collections and the use of the Bible.
The ‘Maison du Savoir’ of the University of Luxembourg, venue of CHR 2025
In the words of Kriston Rennie, canon law is a genre that intersects ‘with every aspect of medieval life and society’. This is illustrated by the fact that canonical works, in all their shapes and sizes, are often found in manuscripts that contain a variety of different texts. A study into the canonical tract, known as De ratione matrimonii (On the Nature of Marriage), led the SOLEMNE team to Vatican, Pal. lat. 973, a ‘multi-text manuscript’ in optima forma. Here, this normative text mingles with a plethora of other works, including several minuscule texts, which – despite being contextually extraneous – provide context and nuance to the medieval reception of canon law. This November, Sven was invited by Prof. Ildar Garipzanov and the MINiTEXTS project to present some of our findings in Oslo. This presented a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the important work done by the MINiTEXTS project members.
Last folio of the manuscript Vatican, Pal. lat. 973
The work on this edition started long before the SOLEMNE project saw the light, but since the text under consideration (the ‘Collection in 400 chapters‘) is relevant to the project, its publication after many years deserves mention here.
Although the Collectio 400 capitulorum is a so-called systematic collection, eminent scholars of canon law commented on its lack of structure. Even ‘with the best will in the world’, the collection’s system eluded them. Despite its flaws, however, there is evidence that the collection gained some popularity in the ninth century, apparently providing the basis for the Poenitentiale Martenianum, directly or indirectly influencing Hrabanus Maurus and Benedictus Levita. The ninth-century appreciation is understandable, for, as one of the many products of the vigorous canonical activity of the eighth and ninth centuries, the Collectio 400 capitulorum impresses in its handling of the canonical material as well as the breadth of sources and the topics covered.
This book constitutes the first in-depth study of this intriguing canonical collection, with a detailed description of the extant manuscript witnesses, its sources, and its influence. The critical edition offers scholars of the early Middle Ages in general and canon law in particular access to an instructive, if unpolished, product of Carolingian legal thought.
The book has now materialised (both as an actual book and an ebook) and is available for order on the website of the Catholic University of America Press, and at your local bookstore.
The SOLEMNE project has organised two sessions at this year’s IMC at Leeds, under the heading ‘States of Excerption’ (nos. 224 and 324).
In the (early) Middle Ages, learning meant collecting: the extant manuscript witnesses are filled with medieval collections made up of texts taken from (excerpts of) earlier works. These building blocks not seldom derive from texts of different genres and the resulting collection also often defies neat classification into genres. The picture becomes even more interesting when collections themselves are excerpted and their parts are used in ‘derivative’ collections.
Organised by SOLEMNE’s Gideon de Jong, and moderated by Catherine Cubitt (School of History & Art History, University of East Anglia), session 224 includes four papers addressing this theme.
‘Quales debeant esse pastores’: Moral Guidance for Preaching Monks
Matthieu van der Meer, Syracuse University, New York
An Early Medieval Epigraphic Sylloge as an Intentional Collection
Seán Stewart, University of Toronto
Patchworking the Truth: Some Aspects of Pseudo-Isidorius’ Textual Method of Excerpting Auctoritates
Kristina Mitalaité, Lietuvos Kultūros Tyrimų Institutas, Vilnius
‘Hac pauperrima excerptione’, or, an Intellectual Powerhouse Disguised as a ‘Little Work’: The Case of the Collectio canonum quadripartitus
Bruno Schalekamp, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
In session 324, three speakers explore various ways in which digital research methods help us deal with excerptions and collections on their own terms.
Formulae of Authority
Gleb Schmitt, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
Mapping Rhetoric: A Digital Reappraisal of Synagoga and Ecclesia in Late Antiquity
Celis Tittse, Universiteit Utrecht
Vectorising the Fathers: Using Digital Methods to Explore the Reception of Patristic Exegesis
Sven Meeder, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
SOLEMNE’s Gideon de Jong speaks on Shifting Civic Identity in the Legal Disputes about Curial Duties in session 1123, while Jan van Doren discusses Something Fishy: Garum in Food and Medicine in the Early Middle Ages in session 514.
Following the conference, the recorded SOLEMNE sessions will be available to registered attendees for some time here and here.
The second postdoc position within the project has been advertised! We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher who will contribute to the main objectives of the project. Are you our new team member?
Studying the rich textual source material and its reception in different social and cultural contexts, you will investigate the ways in which developing social norms and values are manifested in the changes of particularly unstable texts, characterised by numerous ‘recensions’, variant readings and ‘contaminations’. You will use the project’s dataset, as well as contribute research results to it. Your findings should be presented in at least three major articles in international scientific journals, and you are also expected to contribute to wider communication of the project’s results. Furthermore, you will cooperate closely with all other subprojects and participate in the project’s programme of meetings as a speaker and organiser.
Profile
You should hold a PhD degree in Late Antique, Medieval or Legal History (or a related field). If you have not yet completed your PhD, please submit a statement from your supervisor confirming that the degree will be obtained by the time of appointment.
You have excellent research skills in relation to your career stage, clear descriptive and analytical abilities, and experience with palaeography, manuscript studies and the study of canon law.
You have affinity with Digital Humanities and are willing to acquire or expand your digital skillset. Familiarity with exploratory data analysis would be an advantage.
You must have excellent competence in English and Latin and a passive knowledge of the relevant modern languages. You are an independent thinker, ready to engage in interdisciplinary research, bridging philology, manuscript studies and social history.
You have a strong willingness to work collaboratively in an international research team and you are able to adopt a leadership role.
The last seven folios of Vesoul, Bibliothèque municipal, MS 73 (79) contain an intriguing canonical florilegium, which derives from the late eighth- or early ninth-century Collectio canonum Sangermanensis. The Florilegium Vesulensium(Flor.Ves.) is thereby one of several (partial) reworkings and extracts of the Collectio canonum Sangermansis—itself highly dependent on the Hibernensis.1Roger E Reynolds, ‘Unity and diversity in Carolingian canon law collections: the case of the Collectio Hibernensis and its derivatives’, in: U.-R. Blumenthal (ed.), Carolingian essays: Andrew W. Mellon lectures in early Christian Studies (Washington, DC, 1983), pp. 99–135, at 119-23. Internal evidence demonstrates that the immediate exemplar for the Flor.Ves. was the Sangermanensis as it survives in Paris, BnF lat. 12444. A study of the Flor.Ves. is therefore particularly interesting, not only because we know what the compiler included from the Sangermanensis, but also because we have a good sense of what he/she chose to omit.
The Florilegium Vesulensium opens on folio 81r in Vesoul, Bibliothèque municipal, MS 73 (79)
A transcription of the Florilegium Vesulensium is provided here.
Roger E Reynolds, ‘Unity and diversity in Carolingian canon law collections: the case of the Collectio Hibernensis and its derivatives’, in: U.-R. Blumenthal (ed.), Carolingian essays: Andrew W. Mellon lectures in early Christian Studies (Washington, DC, 1983), pp. 99–135, at 119-23.
The first days of 2024 were dedicated to the opening workshop of the SOLEMNE project. In the intimate setting of Heyendael House on the Radboud University Campus, a group of specialists working with early medieval normative sources and digital datasets gathered to share lessons learned and future ambitions.
Inspiring examples of the combination of early medieval sources and digital humanities were presented by Sören Kaschke (Capitularia project), Abigail Firey (Carolingian Canon Law project), Helena Geitz (Burchards Dekret Digital project), Danica Summerlin and Christof Rolker (Clavis canonum project), Shari Boodts and Gleb Schmidt (PASSIM project). The current state of research on the technical side of digital datasets was presented by Arjen de Vries (Radboud Institute for Computing and Information Sciences). The meetings produced a lot of food for thought. The conversations will undoubtedly continue in the years to come.
Normative texts need to be authoritative to be effective in communicating norms and rules. Recent scholarship has shown a renewed interest in the authoritative status of the texts within early medieval works of canon law and the ways in which authority is reflected in the practice of attribution, promulgation, or organization. A small canonical collection known as the Collectio 91 capitulorum appears to flout the received knowledge. My recent article in Early Medieval Europe presents this modest collection. It explores the relationship between ‘authority’ and canon law in general, and examines the negotiation of authority within this collection in particular.
It is well known that in early medieval manuscripts with canonical material, other genres of normative works often accompany ‘purely’ canonical texts. In fact, compilers of systematically arranged canonical collections not seldomly drew on royal capitularies when selecting the authoritative material for their collections. This latter phenomenon appears to be at work in the tenth- or eleventh-century manuscript now in the municipal library in Vesoul.1Not referred to by Valeska Koal (2001), Studien zur Nachwirkung der Kapitularien in den Kanonessammlungen des Frühmittelalters,Freiburger Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte 13, Frankfurt a. M. [u.a.]. Here material from the royal capitularies forms part of the canonical collection itself.
Neither the manuscript, nor the presence of excerpts from royal capitularies were unknown to previous scholars. The role of these texts within the carefully assembled material of this eleventh-century manuscript has, however, escaped detailed study. Hubert Mordek described Vesoul, Bibliothèque municipal, MS 79 (73) as a ‘typisch kirchliche Gebrauchshandschrift’,2Mordek, Hubert (1995), Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta: Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hilfsmittel, Munich, p. 895 a typical utilitarian religious manuscript. Its mundane character is reflected in its humble material aspects. With its 88 folios measuring at most 190 x 130 mm, it is a small, handy codex that is convenient to carry around. Its low-grade parchment is of medium thickness, with numerous uneven page edges due to the use of skin from the animal’s neck, shoulders or hind. Multiple holes can be found throughout the manuscript (one hole has been repaired with stitchings—fol. 30).
Its texts were copied by several scribes, writing in a flowing Caroline minuscule, but making more than a few errors in their Latin. It is a fairly well-organised codex, with red rubrics in minuscule (rarely in capitals) separating the different works, guiding the reader through the selection of texts. This sober manuscript has only two small illustrations, which were perhaps added later: a man in a hat can be spotted in the initial Q on folio 12v (opening a statement on the performance of augury and divination), while another initial Q holds a drawing of a face (folio 23v).
The origin of the manuscript, dated to the end of the tenth century or the eleventh century, remains unclear.3Paul Fournier, ‘Notices sur trois collections canoniques inédites de l’époque carolingienne’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 6, no. 1 (1926), pp. 78–92, at 79 (tenth century); C. de Clercq, La législation relgieuse franque. Étude sur les actes de conciles et les capitulaires, les statuts diocésains et les règles monastiques (Louvain, Paris, 1936), I: 142 (tenth century); Hubert Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta: Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hilfsmittel, Munich, 1995), 894 (eleventh century). Since it made its way to the municipal library from the Abbey of Faverney, not too far from the monastery of Luxeuil, Franz Bernd Asbachassumed that the manuscript originated from the area of Luxeuil.4Franz Bernd Asbach, Das Poenitentiale Remense und der sogen. Excarpsus Cummeani: Überlieferung. Quellen und Entwicklung zweier kontinentaler Bußbücher aus der 1. Hälfte des 8. Jahrhunderts, Unpubl. PhD thesis (Regensburg, 1975), 45. See also Allen J. Frantzen, ‘The Penitentials Attributed to Bede’, Speculum 58, no. 3 (1983), pp. 573–97, at 579. The monks of Faverney, however, only came into possession of the codex in the late eighteenth century, shortly before the French revolution, possibly from an heir of magister ‘Iohannes Denisot’, whose name appears in early modern script on one of the flyleafs. This Jean Denisot may have been a member of an originally English family who moved from the Nogent area to Le Mans, which may point to an origin of the manuscript closer to Paris, but this is quite uncertain.
Importantly, it appears that the combination of texts in Vesoul 79 (73) was considered and intentional, and that the book should be studied as a whole. The codex combines authoritative statements especially relevant to secular clergy and local Christian communities with simple and brief explanations of church dogma and practice. In addition to basic penitential rules, the manuscript has a canonical collection (the Collectio 91 capitulorum) and a canonical florilegium providing guidelines detailing the behaviour of priests, prescriptions concerning fasting, Feast days, donations, as well as the clergy’s duty to teach the laity the basics of Christianity. A tract on baptism—in question-response form—and the explanations of the Creed, Mass, and Paternoster provide more practical instructions concerning the Christian cult to low-level clergy. The topics covered by the canonical collection suggest a hands-on and ‘local’ focus of the collection, something that is also reflected in the materiality of its sole surviving manuscript.
As the youngest datable text in the manuscript dates from the early ninth century—namely, a selection of excerpts from Theodulf of Orléans’s first capitulary (written sometime between 798 and 818)—, this combination of texts appears to stem from the second quarter of the ninth century. The absence of any later texts, suggests that we can consider the eleventh-century manuscript from Vesoul as a faithful copy of a ninth-century codex. It is uncertain, but not unlikely, that the sober character of the manuscript in Vesoul reflects the nature of its exemplar. We thus seem to have a tenth- or eleventh-century witness of a ninth-century small practical pastoral book.
There are excerpt from four royal capitularies within the canonical collection known as the Collectio 91 capitulorum: BK 23, BK 13, BK 15 and BK 16 (numbered according to the edition by Boretius/Krause, see the Capitulariaproject). The last three appear at the end of the collection, but the fragment from capitulum 19 of the so-called Duplexlegationis edictum of 789 is found in the middle of the collection, as chapter 37. It calls on bishops to ensure that small nunneries find a fixed place and adopt a rule. It also asserts that abbesses should not act contrary to the rule. The rest of the capitulum, prohibiting the abbess to leave the cloister without ‘our’ command, forbidding the nuns to write or sing vulgar songs, or to perform bloodletting, is left out by the compiler of the canonical collection. The version in the Collectio 91 capitulorum also omits the finite verb of the first sentence (‘uolumus ut’), which indicates the royal authority of this decree. Instead, the chapter now seems to blend seamlessly with the surrounding chapters on nuns and abbesses (cc. 36-46), which are taken more ‘tradition’ canonical material, such as the Theodorian penitential and Gallic synodal acts.
The final chapter of the Collectio 91 capitulorum is formed by three chapters of the Pippin’s capitulary (754 x 755),5Breternitz, Patrick (2020), Königtum und Recht nach dem Dynastiewechsel: das Königskapitular Pippins des Jüngeren, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 12, Ostfildern.capitula 1, 2, 3 (BK 13). The chapter discusses incest, a word not explicitly used anywhere else in the collection. The decree forbids incest with a number of listed categories of women (those consecrated to God, godmothers, family member), prescribing monetary fees, lashes or even imprisonment for violations.6See on these decrees—and those following—Ubl 2008 S. 261-270. The version in Vesoul 79 (73) repeatedly—but not always—assigns a fee of 40 (XL) solidi, where the original(?) capitulary has 60 (LX).
The chapter is unique in that it strongly affirms the secular authority in matters relating to incest, stipulating that—in some case—a fine should be paid to the king and assigning a role to the comes in enforcing the rules. Ecclesiastical authority is only referenced when the offender is a cleric, in which case the bishops and the comes are supposed to cooperate in his prosecution. Because of the emphasis on secular authority, the decree would seem to be less suitable for a canonical collection, but its explicit numbering (XCI) indicates that it was clearly seen as an element of this collection of canon law. Perhaps, the royal capitulary was regarded as the most apposite normative text to treat the topic of incest for the particular audience of the Collectio 91 capitulorum.
Not referred to by Valeska Koal (2001), Studien zur Nachwirkung der Kapitularien in den Kanonessammlungen des Frühmittelalters,Freiburger Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte 13, Frankfurt a. M. [u.a.].
2
Mordek, Hubert (1995), Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta: Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hilfsmittel, Munich, p. 895
3
Paul Fournier, ‘Notices sur trois collections canoniques inédites de l’époque carolingienne’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 6, no. 1 (1926), pp. 78–92, at 79 (tenth century); C. de Clercq, La législation relgieuse franque. Étude sur les actes de conciles et les capitulaires, les statuts diocésains et les règles monastiques (Louvain, Paris, 1936), I: 142 (tenth century); Hubert Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta: Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hilfsmittel, Munich, 1995), 894 (eleventh century).
4
Franz Bernd Asbach, Das Poenitentiale Remense und der sogen. Excarpsus Cummeani: Überlieferung. Quellen und Entwicklung zweier kontinentaler Bußbücher aus der 1. Hälfte des 8. Jahrhunderts, Unpubl. PhD thesis (Regensburg, 1975), 45. See also Allen J. Frantzen, ‘The Penitentials Attributed to Bede’, Speculum 58, no. 3 (1983), pp. 573–97, at 579.
5
Breternitz, Patrick (2020), Königtum und Recht nach dem Dynastiewechsel: das Königskapitular Pippins des Jüngeren, Quellen und Forschungen zum Recht im Mittelalter 12, Ostfildern.
6
See on these decrees—and those following—Ubl 2008 S. 261-270.
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The work on this edition started long before the SOLEMNE project saw the light, but since the text under consideration (the ‘
The SOLEMNE project has organised two sessions at this year’s IMC at Leeds, under the heading ‘States of Excerption’ (nos. 224 and 324).
