Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DISSINET (Networks of Dissent: Computational Modelling of Dissident and Inquisitorial Cultures in Medieval Europe)
Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2024-08-31
The project aims at a “networked” understanding of dissident religious and inquisitorial cultures in medieval Europe by way of a comprehensive computational approach to the social, spatial, and textual relationships by which they were formed and recorded. Rather than treating these cultures through narrative case study or traditional social-historical analysis, our approach builds upwards from the microscopic details of human interactivity towards a broader social picture.
There is an urgent need for such a bridging framework, capable of engaging with the different modalities and contexts of involvement, the different kinds of interactions people undertook, the dynamic flow and negotiation of beliefs, practices and institutions, and ultimately the functioning of a religious culture. This perspective has the potential to deeply transform the study of heresy and overcome the binary opposition between approaches that emphasisze common organisational structures and shared elements in beliefs and practices on the one hand, and those that stress the ever-changing, fugitive, and haphazard character of medieval dissidence on the other.
We want to achieve the following objectives:
1. remodel our knowledge of medieval religious dissidence, inquisition, and inquisition records by providing transparent answers informed by computational approaches;
2. theorise more general aspects of human social behaviour in the premodern world based on relational data from inquisition records (e.g. exchange, mobility, gendered patterns in human agency and interaction, the formation and functioning of religious networks, etc.);
3. raise the bar in the application of quantitative approaches in historical research by using state-of-the-art methods;
4. reach a new level of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization between history, social sciences, and computational approaches.
There is an urgent need for such a bridging framework, capable of engaging with the different modalities and contexts of involvement, the different kinds of interactions people undertook, the dynamic flow and negotiation of beliefs, practices and institutions, and ultimately the functioning of a religious culture. This perspective has the potential to deeply transform the study of heresy and overcome the binary opposition between approaches that emphasisze common organisational structures and shared elements in beliefs and practices on the one hand, and those that stress the ever-changing, fugitive, and haphazard character of medieval dissidence on the other.
We want to achieve the following objectives:
1. remodel our knowledge of medieval religious dissidence, inquisition, and inquisition records by providing transparent answers informed by computational approaches;
2. theorise more general aspects of human social behaviour in the premodern world based on relational data from inquisition records (e.g. exchange, mobility, gendered patterns in human agency and interaction, the formation and functioning of religious networks, etc.);
3. raise the bar in the application of quantitative approaches in historical research by using state-of-the-art methods;
4. reach a new level of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization between history, social sciences, and computational approaches.
Since its beginning in September 2021, the “Networks of Dissent” project (DISSINET) has fully developed its approach to the collection of syntactic-semantic data from historical texts, CASTEMO (Computer-Assisted Semantic Text Modelling). It has also published an application to build CASTEMO knowledge graphs, InkVisitor, which is open-source and available under an open licence (version 1.3 available on GitHub).
The newly constituted team has been working on manual collection of structured data from medieval heresy trial records from various regions of Europe and various periods (1230s to 1520s) and on the constitution of a segmented textual corpus. By analysing this body of data, they aim to provide not only a new understanding of medieval inquisitorial and dissident cultures and their interaction, but also the behaviour of premodern people under pressure, the formation of covert networks, and the emergence of a religious culture from local interactions.
On the basis of this original data, we have produced public outcomes such as interactive maps, articles in academic journals, outreach articles, and podcasts, allowing both the academic community and the broader public to gain new insights into religious dissidence, inquisition, and the dynamics of personal interactions in premodern societies.
The newly constituted team has been working on manual collection of structured data from medieval heresy trial records from various regions of Europe and various periods (1230s to 1520s) and on the constitution of a segmented textual corpus. By analysing this body of data, they aim to provide not only a new understanding of medieval inquisitorial and dissident cultures and their interaction, but also the behaviour of premodern people under pressure, the formation of covert networks, and the emergence of a religious culture from local interactions.
On the basis of this original data, we have produced public outcomes such as interactive maps, articles in academic journals, outreach articles, and podcasts, allowing both the academic community and the broader public to gain new insights into religious dissidence, inquisition, and the dynamics of personal interactions in premodern societies.
Bringing together a complex data model that can handle qualitative subtlety and quantitative bulk, and the techniques of social network analysis (SNA), geographic information science (GIS), and computational text analysis (CTA), DISSINET has the potential to radically reorient research concerning medieval dissident cultures and the interplay between inquisition and a society under suspicion. In addition, our involvement with the broader field of social-scientific research will provide new insights for the study of premodern society, covert networks and their repression, and the dynamics of religious culture.
The understanding that religious cultures emerge from various kinds of relations and interactions between particular people can form the basis for a practical methodological framework. Using the latest computational methods, we can bridge the qualitative and the statistical, the local and the widespread, and the micro- and the macro- levels in the analysis of medieval religious dissent and inquisition. Systematically analysing this relational information from inquisition records will allow us to transform historiographical and methodological perspectives on two critical topics concerning medieval dissent and inquisition: the social and spatial aspects of medieval dissident cultures; and the study of inquisition as an interactive process.
Geography of heresy has been lacking a more “bottom-up” understanding of medieval dissident cultures in all their complexity from small-scale configurations of local and long-range relationships and interactions. The study of the interaction between inquisitors and those under suspicion would also benefit significantly from a new methodology. Some of the most theoretically engaging and field-changing contributions to the history of inquisition have been produced by research into the dynamics of these interactions and the imprint they have left in inquisitorial records. They suggest a direction of research that has yet to be explored for want of suitable methodologies: that is, the combination of deep-qualitative and broad-quantitative perspectives through a systematic modelling of inquisitor-dissident interaction across a wide body of cases.
The understanding that religious cultures emerge from various kinds of relations and interactions between particular people can form the basis for a practical methodological framework. Using the latest computational methods, we can bridge the qualitative and the statistical, the local and the widespread, and the micro- and the macro- levels in the analysis of medieval religious dissent and inquisition. Systematically analysing this relational information from inquisition records will allow us to transform historiographical and methodological perspectives on two critical topics concerning medieval dissent and inquisition: the social and spatial aspects of medieval dissident cultures; and the study of inquisition as an interactive process.
Geography of heresy has been lacking a more “bottom-up” understanding of medieval dissident cultures in all their complexity from small-scale configurations of local and long-range relationships and interactions. The study of the interaction between inquisitors and those under suspicion would also benefit significantly from a new methodology. Some of the most theoretically engaging and field-changing contributions to the history of inquisition have been produced by research into the dynamics of these interactions and the imprint they have left in inquisitorial records. They suggest a direction of research that has yet to be explored for want of suitable methodologies: that is, the combination of deep-qualitative and broad-quantitative perspectives through a systematic modelling of inquisitor-dissident interaction across a wide body of cases.