This proposal is to fund stage 2 of Linking Evidence, a Digital Humanities project begun in 2012, which aims to produce new tools and a new model for the study of the medieval city, starting from the exemplary case of Rome. We have set up a website including the 12th-15th century descriptions of Rome and the inscriptions associated with monuments and works of art. The first stage was completed at the end of 2014, and the website is now open access. In stage 2 we will add 5 new texts, offer critical editions of the texts which still need one, provide new apparatuses and commentaries. A section on the Mirabilia Romae will be added, containing reproductions of manuscripts, comparative editions of the different versions of the text, a critical edition of the oldest version, and translations into Italian and English. A new epigraphic section will be prepared, containing critical editions and translations of the entire corpus of the medieval and early Renaissance inscriptions on the city of Rome, plus pictures of the extant ones. A catalogue of images including both photographs and graphic records of all the monuments mentioned in the descriptions and inscriptions will be prepared. We plan to upload about 1000 meta-data pieces of information and 800 images at this stage. A georeferenced map of medieval and early Renaissance Rome based on the descriptions, the inscriptions and the images will be prepared. The almost 750 items now searchable in the section Monuments, and the new ones (ca. 300) will be displayed on a single GIS map of Rome in which every item will be linked to related images and texts. Nothing like this has previously been attempted. Combining philology, Latin literature, Medieval and Humanist literature and scholarship, Middle English literature, epigraphy, palaeography, and art history, this approach will provide a new multifaceted and interdisciplinary reconstruction of medieval Rome, while offering a new paradigm to be applied to other medieval cities.
