Abstract
Abstract This paper introduces a tool which offers scholars a new way to visualize the structure of manuscripts. The Structural Visualization of Manuscripts (or StruViMan) is a web-based application, developed as part of the Paratexts of the Greek Bible Project, a European Research Council project based in Munich. Drawing on the principles of structural codicology, StruViMan is able to translate the different stages of a manuscript’s development into a visual model based on the codex’s physical, historical layers and aims to facilitate the comparison of manuscripts. It can be used by any web-connected manuscript database from any cultural area and does not require the presence of electronic images. This presentation begins with a short survey of the principles underpinning the tool’s conception and development, followed by a demonstration of how manuscript data from both biblical and non-biblical Greek codices are transformed into interactive, customizable visualizations with varying display modes. We will also touch upon StruViMan’s technical aspects as an open-access web service, available to any software or database able to call its API using the correct parameters. We close with a preview of new features currently under development, including the ability to “reconstruct” a manuscript whose composite parts are presently in different repositories.
Highlights
The Structural Visualization of Manuscripts (StruViMan)2 came into being as an ERC proof-of-concept project and was developed between 2017–2018 as a practical extension of the Paratexts of the Greek Bible (ParaTexBib)3 project, a larger, five-year ERC project based at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, begun in 2015 and led by Martin Wallraff and Patrick Andrist
StruViMan was developed within the context of a project dedicated to the Greek Bible, it has been our express goal from the outset to create a tool which can serve any database dealing with any kind of manuscripts
The important thing for understanding how our descriptions are organized in Pinakes is the following: our descriptions are arranged according to a so-called syntactical model which allows the reader to approach the codex both “vertically” and “horizontally”
Summary
In this paper we would like to introduce a tool which offers scholars a new way to visualize the structure of medieval manuscripts. The Structural Visualization of Manuscripts (StruViMan) came into being as an ERC proof-of-concept project and was developed between 2017–2018 as a practical extension of the Paratexts of the Greek Bible (ParaTexBib) project, a larger, five-year ERC project based at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, begun in 2015 and led by Martin Wallraff and Patrick Andrist. StruViMan was developed within the context of a project dedicated to the Greek Bible, it has been our express goal from the outset to create a tool which can serve any database dealing with any kind of manuscripts. In order to understand how the StruViMan tool came into being, let us first look briefly at the research project from which it emerged, since the ParaTexBib project’s approach to working with biblical manuscripts proved formative in the tool’s development. The first concerned the processing and storing of the data: rather than constructing a new database from scratch, the project leaders decided to seek partners with pre-existing databases, so that the data could be built up and stored in a well-established and curated environment This policy paved the way for two fruitful partnerships: the Section grecque of the Institut de recherche et d’histoire de textes maintains Pinakes, the largest and most important online database of Greek manuscripts, and it is within their framework that we were able to build a series of new fields and functions that answered our data requirements. Another important feature of La syntaxe is its emphasis on the points of intersection between a manuscript’s codicological and textual features, as well as the development of a descriptive language which can navigate and disentangle the often complicated diachronic interplay between them
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