The Plan
The problem is this: Peter the Venerable was one of the most prolific authors of the twelfth-century and was the head of one of the most powerful religious networks in Western Europe, but few translations of his work have appeared. The number and the inaccessibility of his writings (written in self-consciouslessly "elite" Latin as well as more "rustic" works) as well as the general historiographical focus on Cluny during the tenth and eleventh centures, has meant scholarship has avoided engaging deeply with Peter the Venerable. Unlike other twelfth-century monastic figures, such as Bernard of Clairvaux who continues to be studied and meditated upon by contemporary Cistercians (his intellectual descendents), the Order of Cluny came to an end in the eighteenth century, and thus lacks a modern body of religious interested in making its works available. Even with current Cluniac studies, the twelfth century remains of lesser interest (explained why here)
The general unpopularity of Peter the Venerable also means a project of this sort is manageable by a small group of scholars. It is possible to create links between this site and the existing editions (many early modern), studies, and resources. As more manuscripts are digitized and placed online to be freely consulted, there are greater possibilities for linking text with manuscript images. The difficulty therefore is how to begin this process. Increasing access to and translating Peter's works is still a long term project and would benefit from collaboration.
This project is at the very preliminary stages – I have thought about the need for greater access to Peter the Venerable and his writings for years, but am now starting to figure out what it would look like in practice. This Gitbook/Github project site represent my first stab at it – an initial upload of texts, translations and other resources that I have been working on for years and currently exist only my hard drive and which I have sloppily translated for personal research (not public consumption). Many of the translations thus are unfinished: the text will break off, Latin placenames are left in the original, names are inconsistently translated etc. Part of the translation project will be figuring out these nitty-gritty details.
Timeline of work
The first stage is brainstorming the extent of the project. I've starting working up a sitemap for the project - suggestions are welcomed on the intended plan.
The second stage will be uploading some translations. As we upload content, it will likely bring notice to things we hadn't thought about, which in turn will require further brainstorming around the sitemap/ project documents.
Once we have a rough sense of what is uploaded here, we will move forward with a pilot project of one or two texts - figuring out the best way to integrate hosted transcriptions and translations with links to manuscript images, digital facsimiles of early modern editions etc. The goal will be to move beyond simple text files (Gitbook uses .json files/ Github uses Markdown files) to incorporate TEI versions of Latin editions, as well as the matching translation(s).
This subsequent development might require that the project move away from the Gitbook/Github environment, for something better suited to handle/ present these texts.
When rough draft translations are completed, and we move towards a more stable form (presumably some form of TEI-based XML files), there will be increasing need to standardize names - which will require other forms of structured data, perhaps dynamic not static databases to keep track of material. But this is years away.... In the meantime, I will start putting together some datasets (such as names of Peter's correspondents, the degree of their interaction) which might be useful in constructing social relationships using Gephi.
How to Set About Collaborating?
I don't have an answer for this. I want to get this page up to a certain level of completeness before I begin inviting/ badgering people to help out. If you come upon this site before that stage, maybe the best starting place is joining the Gitbook team, or perhaps using the hypothes.is annotation tool. The advantage of using a git based system is that it records everyone's contributions automatically - so acknowledgement of multiple authorship is automatically built into this version of the Petrus project.
the first stage of collaboration would like be to create a page laying out how to join the Gitbook/ register for the team.
And maybe create a hypothes.is group just devoted to this? Join here, but I guess I should explain how to use it etc. on a collaboration page.
Sitemap Brainstorming
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