Barcelona Cathedral Research Articles

The Barcelona Historical Marriage Database and the Baix Llobregat Demographic Database. From Algorithms for Handwriting Recognition to Individual-Level Demographic and Socioeconomic Data

The Barcelona Historical Marriage Database (BHMD) gathers records of the more than 600,000 marriages celebrated in the Diocese of Barcelona and their taxation registered in Barcelona Cathedral's so-called Marriage Licenses Books for the long period 1451–1905 and the BALL Demographic Database brings together the individual information recorded in the population registers, censuses and fiscal censuses of the main municipalities of the county of Baix Llobregat (Barcelona). In this ongoing collection 263,786 individual observations have been assembled, dating from the period between 1828 and 1965 by December 2020. The two databases started as part of different interdisciplinary research projects at the crossroads of Historical Demography and Computer Vision. Their construction uses artificial intelligence and computer vision methods as Handwriting Recognition to reduce the time of execution. However, its current state still requires some human intervention which explains the implemented crowdsourcing and game sourcing experiences. Moreover, knowledge graph techniques have allowed the application of advanced record linkage to link the same individuals and families across time and space. Moreover, we will discuss the main research lines using both databases developed so far in historical demography.

Escenarios para el juicio y la liturgia en el sepulcro de santa Eulalia de la catedral de Barcelona

The extraordinary masterpiece of Lupo di Francesco’s workshop, located in the crypt of Saint Eulalia in the Barcelona Cathedral, has already been analysed on other occasions. The study of the work is not completely exhausted, and for this reason we start from this base to propose a new reading of the monument. We are interested in reviewing the program’s approaches and remarking the significant physiognomy of the Pisanrooted work, preferably paying attention to the installation, chronologies, function and communication framework in which it is integrated. This space, both liturgical and ceremonial but also symbolic and associated with the preservation and worship of relics, is based on a theme in which justice and injustice collide. At the same time, it reveals the routes between different historical times. The Gothic-style construction of the new building and the iconic and figurative surroundings that emerge from the project executed between 1326 and July 1339, distinguish the organization of the east end of the cathedral. These coordinates will be pertinent points of support to visualize a reading of the sepulchre as a self-referential liturgical installation, in which human judgment is rectified by the divine.

Lupitus von Barcelona: Zur Identität eines wissenschaftlichen Übersetzers des 10. Jahrhunderts

In one of his letters of the year 984, Gerbert of Aurillac, the later Pope Sylvester II, asks a certain Lupitus of Barcelona for his translation of a book on astronomy. This translator has so far been identified with Seniofred Llobet, who was by that time the archdeacon of Barcelona cathedral. A thorough examination of the letter as well as of other contemporary sources, however, precludes the archdeacon from this identification. The translator Lupitus must rather have been a Mozarabic clergyman who immigrated from Muslim Spain, from where he probably brought with him the Arabic original for his translation. This paper intends to throw some light on a hitherto poorly studied stage of the transmission process that brought the astrolabe from Al-Andalus to Europe.

Calendari músico-liturgic de la Catedral de Barcelona, finals del s. XVII-inicis del s. XVIII

El manuscrito "Manual del Cabiscol" del Archivo de la Catedral de Barcelona (1682-1729), contiene todas las normas que regían en dicha Catedral desde tiempos inmemoriales, concernientes al digno y solemne desarrollo del culto de dicha Catedral. En él se recogen hasta los más mínimos detalles de las ceremonias y ritos de todos los actos realizados en el coro, en el altar e incluso en las procesiones fuera de la iglesia, según las exigencias de cada solemnidad del año litúrgico. En el presente artículo, se entresaca de dicho "manual", todo lo que se refiere a la importante participación musical en cada una de dichas solemnidades.

Insights into the chronology and reception of Philippe de Vitry’s Ars Nova theory: revisiting the mensural treatise of Barcelona Cathedral

Barcelona Cathedral preserves a 14th-century manuscript whose only contents are a treatise on mensural notation traditionally dated c.1350. This article argues that many details in the text rather point towards the 1330s, and suggest a possible Parisian influence. This revised dating highlights the treatise’s historical significance as a witness of the development of Ars Nova theory during the first half of the 14th century. Specifically, the Barcelona treatise appears to be one of the earliest compendia that report the systematization of the ‘four prolations’, a mensural system that was developed in music theory during the 1330s and remained the foundation of musical notation for centuries to come.

Chronicle of an early demise, surname extinction in the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries

ABSTRACTIt has been amply demonstrated that individuals' reproductive capability is the key explanatory phenomenon for understanding onomastic disappearance during the early modern period. This article analyzes the evolution and consequences of surname extinction in a specific population: Catalonia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this article two aspects are examined. First, the observed disappearance of surnames is estimated through historical data collected in the Llibres d'Esposalles (Marriage Books) from 1481 to 1600 at Barcelona Cathedral. Second, the estimated natural extinction of those surnames registered in 1481 is forecast by applying a statistical branching process.

Conservation-Oriented Structural Analysis of the Spire of Barcelona Cathedral

The spire of Barcelona cathedral suffered from severe problems due to the corrosion of the steel ties used in reinforcing its stone masonry beams. Wide visible cracks were noticed in the stone beams and large parts were detached. Therefore, the full spire was dismantled and reconstructed using titanium ties to eliminate the corrosion problem. A finite element model of the spire was created and analyzed using DIANA software to support this decision. This analysis helped in understanding the role and strength contributions of these ties in resisting the applied loads on the spire, specifically, the lateral loads of earthquakes and wind. A nonlinear static (pushover) analysis was carried out to assess the spire capacity under the lateral loads. A number of constitutive models for modeling the masonry behavior were tried. Also, a number of seismic actions patterns were considered. As a main conclusion of this study, the ties were highly needed to carry the tensile stresses caused by earthquakes and wind loads. Therefore, in the reconstruction of the spire, such ties must be kept in the masonry beams.

Metalurgia medieval aplicada a la construcción. Las rejas góticas de la Catedral de Barcelona

In the Barcelona Cathedral remain in use various contemporary bars of the original building. They are made with iron / steel and with decorative elements of copper alloy. Prior to the advances in quality and productivity innovations of the Catalan method of XVII century, it was considered of interest to identify the level of technological development applied by metallographic study. The analysis has consisted to obtain samples for observation in optical microscopy and SEM, micro durometer test and EDAX. Generically, the results show a suitable metal, with “soft iron” (hypoeutectoid steel) quality, a use of welding layers and high corrosion resistance. The ornaments are made from bronze and brass, and they are malleable enough to enable the artistic detail and show obvious signs of reused metal.

Mozarabicprecesin Ars Nova notation: a new fourteenth-century fragment discovered in Spain

ABSTRACTThis article reports the discovery of an early fourteenth-century manuscript fragment (two small snippets from the same folio) of Castilian origin. One side of the original folio contained a monophonic piece in Ars Nova notation whose text has been identified as Mozarabicpreces, a musical repertoire that was suposed to lack written transmission from the twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries. The fragment thus throws new light on the survival of the Mozarabic rite through the late Middle Ages. The backside of the folio contains music written in an old mensural system based on undifferentiatedsemibrevesandpuncta divisionis. In this regard, the manuscript may represent the earliest known Spanish source to employ the Petronian system described in the mensural treatise in Barcelona Cathedral (misc. 23). The study includes a detailed codicological examination of the manuscript (including the digital restoration of a palimpsest), transcriptions and musical analysis.

ON THE INFLUENCE OF WORD REPRESENTATIONS FOR HANDWRITTEN WORD SPOTTING IN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS

Word spotting is the process of retrieving all instances of a queried keyword from a digital library of document images. In this paper we evaluate the performance of different word descriptors to assess the advantages and disadvantages of statistical and structural models in a framework of query-by-example word spotting in historical documents. We compare four word representation models, namely sequence alignment using DTW as a baseline reference, a bag of visual words approach as statistical model, a pseudo-structural model based on a Loci features representation, and a structural approach where words are represented by graphs. The four approaches have been tested with two collections of historical data: the George Washington database and the marriage records from the Barcelona Cathedral. We experimentally demonstrate that statistical representations generally give a better performance, however it cannot be neglected that large descriptors are difficult to be implemented in a retrieval scenario where word spotting requires the indexation of data with million word images.

La Capella de Música de la Seu de Barcelona en el segle XVIII (1756-1765)

[ca] Aquest treball, mante la mateixa línia metodològica, emprada en els meus treballs publicats sobre la Capella de Música de la Catedral de Barcelona, durant tot el segle XVII i la primera meitat del s. XVIII, deis quals n'és continuació. Hi trobareu, dones, molts musics, dels quals ja se n'ha parlat en els precedents treballs, en trobareu de nous i també circumstàncies, unes noves i d'altres semblants que animaren la vida musical de l'esmentada Catedral i n'eren la preocupació del Capítol. Alguns punts, tocants a certes persones o matèries, queden sense resolució final, al present treball. Espero poder-les oferir, en altra col•laboració posterior.

La Capella de Música de la Seu de Barcelona des de la mort del mestre Francesc Valls (2-6-1747) fins a l'any 1755

[ca] El present treball contempla la historia de la Capella de Música de la Catedral de Barcelona, des de la mort del gran Mestre i compositor, Francesc Valls, fins a l'any 1755, aquesta darrera data imposada pel límit d'espai, encara que després tindrà continuació. Es pretén donar una visió el mes aproximada possible del que fou l’estructura de la Capella musical, vertebrada alhora amb l’estructura cultual. Les veus humanes, sobre tot es troben repartides en diferents oficis que tenen alguna important actuació en la litúrgia. Hi trobem la part humana dels diferents membres, les dificultats econòmiques dels musics, les dificultats administratives, per tal de poder-Ios subvenir i, en mig de tot això, es produí el patrimoni musical immens que hem heretat i que pretenem conservar i donar a conèixer.

Templers i Hospitalers a Catalunya. Documents conservats al'Arxiu Capitular de la Catedral de Barcelona

The great number of records belonging to the “Arxiu del Gran Priorat de Catalunya, kept in the Archiv of the Crown of Aragon (Barcelona), has suffered a lot of changes of fortune all along the centuries. This article calls the attention about 192 parchments, a book of Privileges and two books on inquisitions against Templars that have at last been localized in the Capitular Archiv of the Barcelona Cathedral.

La casa de Bernat de Sarrià, canonge de la Seu de Barcelona, vers 1300

This article studies the will and inventory of goods left by a rich canon, named Bernat of Sarria, who belonged to a noble family from the surroundings of Barcelona, where his house was built. The canon had a cousin —also named Bernat—, who was a king's counsellor and a very influential person at the court. The inventory is dated the day after the canon was dead, on the 26th July 1302. It contains a large number of clothes, furniture and coins, but neither books nor weapons. The canon also possessed several servants and three slaves, fourteen decorated silver cups, twelve rings and some landed properties in Premia and Alella (villages not far from Barcelona), that produced crops of wheat, barley, wine and oil. A benefice in memory of the date of his death was constituted, with his fortune, at Saint Michael's chapel of Barcelona cathedral. This benefice was devoted to the poor and especially to nourish, for ever, a poor person who was dependent of the cathedral's Almoina. The canon destined for these two pious institutions the amount he obtained of selling his slaves.

Le Corbusier and the space of photography

In 1933, after a decade of adamantly opposing the decorative arts in architecture, Le Corbusier adorned his recently completed PavilIon Suisse with a photo-mural. Comprising forty-four square photographs and extending the length of a long, precisely curved wall, the photo-mural served as focal point to this dormitory for Swiss students in Paris. The black-and-white images combined highly abstract microscopic and aerial views of nature with equally abstract views of geometric, man-made objects (figure 1). In a lecture in Prague two years later, André Breton — his Surrealist viewpoint the antithesis of Le Corbusier's Purist perspective — heartily praised the photo-mural, commending it as an example of ‘concrete irrationality’. He saw in it ‘the desire for ideal things’ often found in Art Nouveau architecture, describing it as ‘irrationally wavy’ and comparing it with two ‘surreal’ monuments: the Ideal Palace of the mailman Cheval and Antonio Gaudí's Barcelona cathedral, a ‘magnificent church, all in vegetables and crustaceans’. And though Breton felt that the Swiss pavilion answered ‘all the conditions of rationality and coldness that anyone could want in recent years since it is the work of Le Corbusier’, he nevertheless viewed the photo-mural as indication that architecture was again attempting ‘to break through all its limits’. His lecture was titled ‘Surrealist Situation of the Object’.1