Possession of monastery Saint-Florent

Below are thumbnail images of examples of maps drawn with this database application. Click on the miniatures or the text-links below to see the real interactive maps. The maps that will show to the left are interactive. When clicking on a place on the map, source evidence and other features of the selected place will be displayed in this pane. To return to the gallery, click on the menu item again. Features of map-drawing will be explained along with their introduction in this presentation.

Example 1: Roman civitates and Frankish pagi around Paris
The map to the left displays the main territorial division of the Frankish kingdom, the pagi. The origin of this division were mainly the Roman civitates, and each civitas was divided in one or more pagus, except the ones that were totally destroyed during the barbaric invasion. Four base colours are used to separate the civitates from each other (red, green, blue and yellow). Within the civitas, different shades of the civitas color are used to show the pagi. For example, the civitas Parisiorum was divided in three pagus, Castrensis, Parisiacus and Pinciacensis. The latin names of the different pagus are drawn on the map when the scale is 500 meters per pixel or less. Two symbols are used on this map, the gray bullet for Roman civitates and a red bullet for Frankish pagi. The symbol of the Roman civitas has an offset to the north-west, to make it possible to show both civitas and pagus on the same location.
Load this interactive map around Paris, Amiens, Autun, Langres

All maps are interactive in the sense that when you click on the map, evidence of, in this case, the pagus are shown to the right together with short quotes from the sources, and if available, links to digital libraries where you can find the source in full-extent. Interactive also means that you can influence the appearance and the content of the map, and where to center the map, within the limits of this database, of course. The maps in this database application are built from different layers, depending on the content selections and map settings. The layer data are stored in the database as decimal longitudes and latitudes, together with feature information. The layers can have one of the following geometric types: polygons, curves or points. No interactive maps are pre-drawn. This particular map consist of 9 layers: the country layer (polygon), rivers (curve), lakes (polygon), coastlines (curve), roman roads (curve), civitas-territories (polygon), pagus-territories (polygon) and longitude and latitude raster (curve). On top is the city-layer (point), which is interactive, with information about pagi and civitates. The scale of the map in this example is set to 500 meter per pixel. All this data are translated to pixel coordinates and drawn on the map within a few seconds.

Example 2: Itinerary of Charlemagne, king of the Franks 768-814, emperor 800
This map shows places visited by king Charlemagne, battles , grants of property or privileges to institutions , minting , with picture-evidence of the coins, and other aspects of his reign. The initial domain of his kingdom, during the co-reign with his brother Carloman 768-771, is shown in transparent blue. Behind the transparent layer, a physical map is drawn as background, showing elevations at 300, 900, 2000, 3000 meters (in different colours) with additional curves in gray showing elevations at 100 and 200 meter. The borders in blue show the boundaries of the civitates of the Frankish kingdom, or east of the river Rhine, the duchies (provinces) of Alemannia, Bavaria, Franconia and Saxony. Clicking on the cities will display source evidence of the activities of Charlemagne for the selected city. In the map-options form , it's possible to restrict the evidence of Charlemagne to a shorter time-period, lets say 768-771, that more accurately will match this particular map. This map is initially centered around the royal palace at Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. Aachen is also set as city of reference, and when clicking on other cities on the current map, distance in kilometers, Roman miles and Gallic Leugas will be computed and displayed.
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Example 3: Itinerary of king Carloman I 768-771
This is the corresponding map showing the domain of the kingdom of Carloman 768-771, the younger brother of Charlemagne. The map is initially centered around the royal palace at Samoussy, dep. Aisne, arrond. Laon, canton Laon-Sud, in France. Use the green arrows to pan the map in four directions, or use the list of localities in the itinerary of Carloman to re-center the map elsewhere, or the search function to center the map around any other city in the database. There are currently over 11,000 cities and villages in the database. The size of the map depends on the size of the browser window on your computer. Within these dimensions you can increase the width of the map by using this menu button , and this button to decrease the width of the map. You can also increase the height of the map by making the header invisible .
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Example 4: Evidence of fiscal property in the Frankish kingdom
Combining the evidence for all Frankish kings will result in a map like this, showing
places of royal visit
other fiscal property
and monasteries under direct royal domination and protection.
Clicking on the localities will display source evidence currently in the database. Most evidence are from royal diplomas, and there are direct links from this application to the individual source documents edited in the digital Monumenta Germaniae historica, or to the source-summaries in Regesta Imperii, concerning diplomas issued by emperor Louis the Pious (814-840), who is still missing in MGH. Evidence of fiscal property are not restricted to diplomas, there are also such evidence in private charters and narrative sources.
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There is a medieval calendar to help with the interpretation of the dates. In the listing of charter evidence, when clicking on a precise date (e.g. 768-10-09), the medieval calendar will open and set the calendar on that day. Of course, you can open the calendar at any time and set the year and month of your interest. The count of days in a month are based on the fixed days of Kalendae, Nonae and Idus, and are displayed in the calendar together with the year in the reign of Carolingian kings. This count of years is different from Calendar years, for example, the years in the reign of Charlemagne and Carloman change on the 9th of October (VII. ante Idus Octobris, i. e. the 7th day before Idus, which for the month of October is the 15th), the day on which they entered the office as king of the Francs.
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Example 5: Evidence of churches in Alsace
Moving a bit to the south-east, upstream the river Rhine, to Strasbourg in the region of Alsace, this is an example of another thematic map that can be drawn with this database application. Displayed are all evidence of churches and church-instititions (monasteries and bishoprics), in the selected time-period. Related are maps showing church patrons. In the maps-menu, click on this symbol to retrieve a list of patrons (Maria, Petrus, Martinus etc.) found in the sources (experimental at this stage). Click on this symbol to list other thematic maps available.
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Example 6: Evidence of places situated in pagus Alsace
Returning to the topic of the first map in this presentation, this is a map showing the evidence of the pagus Alsace, that is, locations that are explicitly said to be situated in pagus Alsacinse. Similar maps can be drawn for other pagi. In the top menu of the maps page, click on this symbol to retreive a list of pagi.
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Example 7: Evidence of cities and villages within the selected time-period
This map shows all locations for which there are at least one evidence in the database, for the selected time-period. The default time-period is set from 400 to 936 (including the years in the interval), however, it's possible to change this in the map-options form , to a time-period reflecting your interest, even a single year (both lower and upper limit must be set to the single year). This map is centered around the city of Worms, in the middle-Rhine valley in Germany. As you can see this particular area is very rich of evidence from the Carolingian period. There are actually 1997 different locations on the current map. At our disposal are the cartularies (in German, Urkundenbücher) of the monasteries Wissembourg, Lorsch, Fulda, and Hersfeld, as well as many royal diplomas of different origin, concerning this region. The map is however not restricted to this region, it is easy to navigate to another place, simply enter a city-name, or at least the three first letters of a name, in the search box in the upper area of the maps page. Then click on one of the links, with the label Center in the list of cities matching your search string, that will appear to the right. The legends of this map, as well as all other maps, are displayed to the right after the map has finished loading.
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Example 8: Evidence of property of bishopric Salzburg
Now we make the map show a larger area, the scale is set to 800 meters per pixel, we have removed the physical background and territories are shown instead. Currently available for this region are territories showing the duchy of Bavaria, with the March of Carinthia (Kärnten) and the Eastern (Avar, Pannonian) March (Ostmark). This map shows the property of the episcopal church of Salzburg. The evidence are mainly from the Notitia Arnonis (788-790) and from the Breves Notitiae (798-800) compiled during bishop Arn and king Charlemagne, which are property inventories of the possessions of Salzburg at that time. The Notitia and Breves contains summary information of donations made by the Agilolfing ducal dynasty in Bavaria before 788 as well as others, and are based on contemporary charters in the archive of Salzburg, now lost. Property of fiscal origin are shown in red and private origin in yellow. There are basically no charter evidence from this period. Later there are royal diplomas where a large amount of fiscal property in Carinthia were given to the church of Salzburg to fulfill the task of mission.
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Example 9: Evidence of property of monastery Saint-Denis
Lets now turn our interest in another direction. The merovingian monastery Saint-Denis 9 km north of Paris was made a royal sanctuary by king Dagobert († 639) and as such, replaced the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The monastery later came under control of the Carolingians and played an important role in the government. Abbot Fulrad was sent by Pepin to Rome to get the approval by the Pope to dispose of the last Merovingian king, and place himself at this position. Fulrad was made archi-capellanus at the court of king Pepin (752-768). The monastery was favorized already by his father Charles Martel, by the donation of the royal domain Clichy, Clipiaco, in 741. He died shortly thereafter and was buried in the monastery church. Since that time, the monastery had the function of a Carolingian palace in the region of Paris. Also under abbot Fulrad, it played an important role in integrating the former duchy of Alemannia, and the duchy of Bavaria, firmly into the political and cultural power of the Carolingian kingdom. Saint-Denis obtained property in southern Austrasia (that is, in the church province Trier with the civitates Metz, Toul and Verdun), Alsace, Alemannia and after 774, in Italy. Like the map of Salzburg above, property of fiscal origin are represented by red bullets, and property of private origin by yellow bullets.
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Example 10: Geo-referenced sources of early medieval Europe
In this application, not only charter evidence are geo-referenced, but also the sources and literature themselves. Listed here are sources and literature that are freely available on the internet in digital libraries such as Google Books, Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France), digital Monumenta Germaniae historica, and other libraries. This map shows available editions of primary sources for places and institutions. Sources that can't be geo-referenced to a particular place or institution are not on this map, like, for example, the collections of Carolingian diplomas. They can instead be found by means of a search for the title. In the quick search box above the main map, select sources and type words from the title,separated by space, in the input box, e.g. "Urkunden Karlmann". Then click the magifier button to start the search.
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Example 11: Geo-referenced literature of early medieval Europe
And finally, this is the corresponding map that shows freely available literature of early medieval Europe. If possible, direct links to individual chapters and articles inside books and scientific journals are provided. On this map, you will, for example, find a large number of scientific articles concerning Merovingian and Carolingian Europe, published in Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes, Le Moyen âge, Revue Numismatique, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde (1876-1935), Francia - Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte (1973-2006), Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, and Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, just to mention the largest online collections.
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