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HomeWelcomeWelcome to the website for the Medieval Memoria Online (MeMO) project. The project aims to help scholars in carrying out research into memoria during the period up to the Reformation (c. 1580) in the area that is the present-day country of the Netherlands.Database applicationThe project's main objective is the creation of a freely accessible database application that will enable researchers to select and analyse source material that is essential for the study of medieval memorial practices. This research application will be presented on this website upon its delivery early in 2013.Scholars working in the field of Medieval memoria face several challenges. To date, research on medieval memoria has dealt primarily with one source type, largely focusing on case studies. This is due to the fact that presently researchers have no overview of the materials and research possibilities at hand. But as so often in medieval studies, the field of memoria requires an interdisciplinary approach, because historians, literary historians, music historians, art historians and theologians (church and liturgical history) are all involved in memoria research. The MeMO project's main objective is to deliver a tool that helps scholars combine the use of different types of sources that are relevant to their research subjects. The advantages are clear: memoria researchers will have online access to a complete overview of the extant materials, not only those restricted to their own discipline, allowing them to set up broad comparative studies. They will also know where to find these materials, which provides much more efficient time-management. To assist memoria scholars MeMO has therefore catalogued the following different types of sources:
MemoriaMedieval memorial culture, also known by the Latin term memoria, was a complex of liturgical and social acts connecting the living and the dead. It does not solely comprise the care for the souls of (deceased) persons, but also the commemoration of their actions, for instance founding religious institutions and obtaining and safeguarding rights, privileges and financial resources. Memoria played a central part in all components and social strata of medieval society through the written word and through objects and their use in rituals. It was fundamental to the creation and expression of the identity of communities and individuals. In other words, the memorial culture testifies to the intertwinement of the care for the here and the care for the hereafter.The user-friendly, internet-based application will be made freely available to all (completion date early 2013). Other products that may assist scholars in their research have already been delivered. The MeMO project was started in 2009 and was developed at Utrecht University in cooperation with VU University in Amsterdam, the University of Groningen and Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) in The Hague. We are grateful to our sponsors and the people who made the project possible. - This page was last updated on: April 4th, 2012 Back to top  |
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