HIT – Histories in Transition

The HIT project is a collaborative project between the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. ACDH-CH is an associated research partner.

The project aims to challenge current views on the cultural history of historiography in the Carolingian and post-Carolingian world (9th–12th centuries) through an innovative study of Salzburg and Freising, two major historical writing centers. It will explore how historical thinking, organization, and writing evolved from the 9th to the 12th century, focusing on new approaches to codifying historical knowledge and their impact on the conceptualization and meaning of history.

Using recent advances in the study of the materiality of manuscript, the project will analyze how medieval historiographers worked with materials like parchment and pen, and how texts were written, combined, and contextualized in manuscripts. The investigation will consider the social context and intellectual environment of these productions, examining the interests involved and the impact of these codices on society.

As part of the project all manuscript descriptions will be entered in a relational database and published in a web application. This will enable users to go beyond the standard data of the manuscript catalogue and to analyse the different chronological layers of the manuscripts, to display or visualise the connections between the manuscripts on the basis of palaeographic analyses (writing styles) and to investigate text filiation and dissemination.

At the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, the project is led by Ksenia Borisova and supervised by Steffen Patzold (funded by the DFG). At the Austrian Academy of Sciences the project is led by Leon Pürstinger and supervised by Maximilian Diesenberger (funded by the FWF). The ACDH-CH team is providing the technical expertise and infrastructure to develop and host a web application for digital data collection and publication of the available data according to current best practices in the field.