Medieval traditions, new technologies: linked Open Geodata and Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio terrae sanctae

Abstract

This article experiments with using the Pelagios Linked Open data infrastructure and its annotation tool Recogito to examine to explore the geographical framework of Burchard of Mount Sion’s thirteenth-century Descriptio terrae sanctae. It places Burchard’s text in the context of medieval practices of linking information intertextually, and illuminates the roles played by geographical intertextual links in the text’s conceptual geography. In particular, it explores the functions of geographical links to Old Testament books of the Deuteronomic History in the Description, and explores Burchard’s methods in using geographical links to harmonize the different textual traditions and geographical frameworks on which the Descriptio draws and to give meaning to the landscape he describes. Overall, the article shows the usefulness of infrastructures such as Pelagios and platforms such as Recogito, alongside more traditional methods of textual and source analysis, in illuminating the geographical framework of a complex medieval text. It highlights some of the difficulties in using such infrastructures to grapple with the complexities of medieval geographical frameworks, while noting some recent developments in digital mapping technologies that may help to address these.

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