Gregorian Archives Texts Editing (GATE)

"Par archive, j’entends d’abord la masse des choses dites dans une culture, conservées, valorisées, réutilisées, répétées et transformées. Bref toute cette masse verbale qui a été fabriquée par les hommes, investie dans leurs techniques et leurs institutions, et qui est tissée avec leur existence et leur histoire. Cette masse de choses dites, je l’envisage non pas du côté de la langue, du système linguistique qu’elles mettent en œuvre, mais du côté des opérations qui lui donnent naissance. […] C’est, en un mot, […] l’analyse des conditions historiques qui rendent compte de ce qu’on dit ou de ce qu’on rejette, ou de ce qu’on transforme dans la masse des choses dites."

−Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits, Tome I

Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University manuscripts

The Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University preserves about 6, 000 manusctipts, mostly works written by the Roman College Jesuits through four centuries, from its foundation in 1551 until today. A large amount of these codices are not still published, since they are texts prepared by professors for the lessons, correspondence, notes and sermons.
To value this heritage it has been decided to start an open and collaborative project where users from all over the world can give their contribution.

Aims and goals

The main goal of this platform is to take advantage of the possibilities offered by a simple and ready to use software like MediaWiki, in order to publish not edited sources owned by the Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University. Sources like those ones that we are going to publish here, usually require years of scholarly work and consistent funding, especially for digitization and to develop and design web platforms. Sometimes these preliminary requirements discourage the start of many projects, especially within small institutions.

Projects

Epistolae Bellarmini cardinalis

This project aims to transcribe all the 2,674 letters collected by the jesuits François Xavier Le Bachelet (1855-1925) and Sebastiaan Peter Cornelis Tromp (1889-1975). These letters compose the so called Epistolae Bellarmini cardinalis collection, nine volumes of typescript epistolae transcription, practically ready to be published: due to unknown reasons, they were not published until today.

Athanasius Kircher Correspondence

The Archives preserves 14 volumes of letters sent by and to Athanasius Kircher, famous Jesuit resident at the Roman College during the XVIIth century. Years ago, Stanford University digitized all the letters and made them accessible via LunaImaging software, enriching them with detailed metadata. To complete this work, here we will publish the transcription of the letters.

Angelo Secchi Correspondence

Angelo Secchi (1818-1878) was a jesuit astronomer and scientist, one of the father of the modern Astrophysics. The Archives preserve a large amount of his works, both handwritten and printed - with a lot of manuscript addition - and his extensive correspondence with the most important scientists of his time. With about 8,000 letters and more than 1,500 people involved, this correspondence is a treasure for the History of Science studies.

External links

• Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University Website
• Pontfical Gregorian University Website
• Clavius on the web project