Regnum Francorum Online

Layer of historical monuments in France

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:00:00 GMT

A subset of the French database of historical monuments, Base Mérimée, has been integrated into RFO. It contains important monuments in archaeology, history and architecture constructed before the 10th century, in all 1719 sites located in 1224 French municipalities.
Load the Base Mérimée - monuments historiques layer.
Read more about the origin of the new layer and how it was constrcuted at the blog Early Medieval Mapping.

Evidence of place in Late Roman sources

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Todays blogpost at Early Medieval Mapping deals with the Late Roman content of the Regnum Francorum database, concerning evidence in primary sources, e.g. Itinerarium Antonini and the Peutinger map, of almost 800 places in the western part of the Roman empire north of the Alps and the Pyrenees. In a second layer, the distribution of Roman milestones discovered in this area, can be studied. You find the two layers under the subheading Thematic layers on the Layers menu tab, where they can be loaded.

Compiling sources of Ancient history

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:00:03 GMT

A blogpost concerning the display of external layers defined by tags, which was recently introduced in the result pane, was posted on Early Medieval mapping, the blog of Regnum Francorum. The layers in question can also be loaded directly from the Sources menu tab, in the upper right corner.

Regnum Francorum Online on Facebook

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:00:03 GMT

This website has a new account on Facebook, www.facebook.com/Regnum.Francorum.Online.

New interface of RFO is now launched

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:00:03 GMT

The new user interface of Regnum Francorum Online (RFO) implements the Google Maps application programming interface (API).The API enables seamless maps and easy integration with external maps and datasets, for instance the 18th century Cassini map of France and Google Fusion Tables. Read more about the new interface and see it in action. Questions and feedback are most welcome.

Charters of emperor Louis II of Italy

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:34:51 GMT

The genuine charters of emperor Louis II of Italy, 844-875, (charter no. 1-69 in the MGH edition) has been georeferenced. The data is visualized on this interactive map, and the entries are linked to the corresponding source document in the digital MGH edition, together with direct links to entries in the Regesta Imperii, and Codice diplomatico della Lombardia medievale (CDLM), concerning charters of S. Giulia di Brescia and Cremona.

Ancient places from Pleiades and maps of the Mediterranean

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:51:23 GMT

In a separate layer, 14.235 ancient places from the Pleiades project (CC-BY), with coordinates from DARMC, has been added to the Regnum Francorum Online (RFO) database. Check out this page for details about the quality of data and how to obtain the dataset. The next step towards an integration and future inter-operation is to match these places with places in the RFO database. Different semi-automated approaches will be evaluated to fulfill this task, at least for places situated in the later realm of the Frankish kingdom. Earlier, 444 Pleiades identifiers have already been assigned to places in RFO. Clicking on places on this layer will load a direct link to the entry in the Pleiades database, and a listing of nearby places in the RFO database.

Base maps (rivers, coastline) for countries around the Mediterranean has been added to the RFO database.
Click the links below to load the Pleiades layer, and visit the ancient Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, or Alexandria

Fortified Alemannic hilltop settlements (4th and 5th century)

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:14:27 GMT

This new geographic layer contains 62 fortified Alemannic 4-5th century hilltop settlements and is based on the article "Die Höhensiedlungen der Alemannen und ihre Deutungsmöglichkeiten zwischen Fürstensitz, Heerlager, Rückungsraum und Kultplatz" by Michael Hoeper (1998). The article appears in Die Franken und die Alemannen bis zur 'Schlacht bei Zülpich' (496/97), edited by Dieter Geuenich.

There is a preview of the book available at Google Books. The archeological evidence indicates that Alemannic hilltop settlements were not founded until the fourth century and stopped being occupied by the end of the fifth century. Most of these sites were abandoned around A.D. 500, which can be explained by the defeat of the Alemanni by the Franks.
Click this link to load the interactive map.

Geo-data from OpenStreetMap

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:52:43 GMT

Layers from OpenStreetMap (CC-BY-SA) have recently been added to the Regnum Francorum Online database. When the scale is set between 10 and 150 meters per pixel, background layers from OSM showing forest, waterways and borders of communes are displayed. Data are added by region, and so far there are data covering the provinces between Loire and Rhine, and along the Danube. Here are a couple of examples:

Itinerary of Charlemagne, Paris and the Forêt des Yvelines.
Itinerary and activities of Charlemagne (768-814) in the Paris-region, displaying places of issue and event, recipients and property mentioned in the charters. The scale of the map is at 100 meter per pixel. Click the map to view in full-size (905x630 pixel, PNG-image, 136 kB), click this link to open the interactive map.

Wissembourg, Alsace, France
Possessions of monastery Wissembourg in the early medieval period, scale 150 meter per pixel. Click the map to view in full-size. Click this link to load the interactive map

The Regnum Francorum Online (beta) historical database explors new possibilities in digital diplomatics. The long term goal of the database is to geo-reference all the charters of Merovingian and Carolingian Europe, together with other meta-data (time, agent, purpose), and to provide persistant links to editions of charters and manuscripts as they become available on the internet. Examples of digital libraries where individual source-documents can be referenced with persistant URI:s are, dMGH, Regesta Imperii, Google Books, Gallica, MDZ, ELEC, ARTEM, LBA and CDLM.

Charters of Charles the Bald

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:26:12 GMT

There has been a major update concerning the charters of Charles the Bald (in French, Charles le Chauve), king of West Francia 840-877. Allthough the modern edition of the charters Recueil des actes de Charles II le Chauve, roi de France edited by Tessier (1943) is not available online, metadata of the charters (date, institutions, locations) can be compiled from other online publications like Die Regesten Karls des Kahlen, Lfg. 1. 840 (823) - 848 by Irmgard Fees (2007), online at Regesta Imperii, and the ARTEM-project, Chartes originales antérieures à 1121 conservées en France, online at the TELMA-portal. In addition, a lot of older editions of the charters can be found online at Google Books and Gallica digital libraries. Permalinks to these charters are provided from within this application, click the symbols on the map.

Load the interactive map of Charles the Bald following this link, including a background layer with the borders from the Treaty of Verdun (843). Note that this layer is not complete, but contains data of the charters that currently can found online.