Case Study: Part 2

My last post describes how I started looking for information about journeys to Rome by people mentioned in the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England database. This post describes how I started storing such information on my own database.

Step 1 was going to the Results column and copying and pasting into a text file each of the 15 lists of 25 identifiers of people whose factoids contained a mention of Rome. The start of this file looked like this.

Abba 1: Name inscribed in the Catacomb of Commodilla (via Ostiense, Rome)
Acca 3: (e/m viii) Bishop of Hexham, 709-731; d.737/740
Adola 1: (e viii) Abbess

Step 2 was to add relevant factoids to a small number of people after which the file looked like this.

Abba 1: Name inscribed in the Catacomb of Commodilla (via Ostiense, Rome)
Acca 3: (e/m viii) Bishop of Hexham, 709-731; d.737/740
Acca 3-Wilfrid 2.journey to Rome: On their way to Rome, Acca 3 and Wilfrid 2 stayed with Willibrord 1.: Bede.HE iii.13
Acca 3.journey to Rome: Acca 3 travelled to Rome with bishop Wilfrid 2. : NorthernAnnals.FirstSet 36
Adola 1: (e viii) Abbess

Step 3 was to add bibliographical information, initially only about the translation of the primary material. Information about the original primary material, almost all in Latin or in Old English, is also available on the PASE database but is unlikely to be useful to me.

Abba 1: Name inscribed in the Catacomb of Commodilla (via Ostiense, Rome)
Acca 3: (e/m viii) Bishop of Hexham, 709-731; d.737/740
Acca 3-Wilfrid 2.journey to Rome: On their way to Rome, Acca 3 and Wilfrid 2 stayed with Willibrord 1.: Bede.HE iii.13
Colgrave, Bertram and Mynors, R. A. B. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People Oxford 1969 (1991) 3-577
Acca 3.journey to Rome: Acca 3 travelled to Rome with bishop Wilfrid 2. : NorthernAnnals.FirstSet 36
Whitelock, Dorothy English Historical Documents c. 500-1042 London and New York 1979 263-276
Adola 1: (e viii) Abbess

Step 4 will be to create in Microsoft Access a simple database table with each record (or row, in layman-speak) containing all the information about a particular factoid in different fields (or columns). This table initially contained just 20 records, while the layout was tested. The first Acca record was laid out like this, with square brackets enclosing the field name and round brackets at the end of the line enclosing comments about the contents of the field.

[ID] 1 (sequential automatically-generated index number)
[Name] Acca 3
[When 1] e/m viii (i.e. early/middle 8th century)
[When 2] 733 (approx. date in numerals, to assist with later searching and sorting by date)
[Factoid] Wilfrid 2.journey to Rome: On their way to Rome, Acca 3 and Wilfrid 2 stayed with Willibrord 1.
[Source] Bede.HE iii.13
[Bib. 1] Colgrave, Bertram and Mynors, R. A. B. (author/s of translation of source)
[Bib. 2] Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (title)
[Bib. 3] Oxford 1969 (1991) (published where and when)
[Bib. 4] 3-577 (page reference: not particularly helpful here!)

Step 5 will be to play around with this limited data set and to see what changes need making before continuing with data entry. The ultimate goal is to produce a table with details of every recorded visit to Rome from England in the period 597 to 1066.

An early task will be to seek to create a report which would enable the generation of a printed bibliography, in MHRA format, which could act as quarry for footnotes for the final thesis.

This step will also endeavour to see whether the results generated by search Location > Rome is comprehensive by comparing them with the visits to Rome listed in Saxon Pilgrims to Roma and the Schola Saxonum.