Durham Liber Vitae: A Digital Analysis, Interlinked Texts, Images and Research

Project start date: 2003-05

Project end date: 2007-04

The Durham Liber Vitae is a complex manuscript which originated in the mid-ninth-century as a list of several hundred names of persons associated with a Northumbrian church, probably Lindisfarne, but possibly around Monkwearmouth/Jarrow. Around 1100 AD, additions were made to the list, principally of monks of Durham Cathedral Priory, continued until and these additions continued until the 16th century. Several thousand names of lay persons were added throughout the middle ages. The manuscript is significant for understanding the phenomena of libri vitae across Europe; for analysing the significance of personal names and their origins; for interpreting the relationship of the church and lay society over a long time period. The manuscript of the Liber Vitae is difficult if not impossible to edit by conventional printed means. The multiplicity of entries, the complexity of the commentary required, and the disorder of the lists of names, especially in the eleventh-century and later sections poses almost insuperable problems to conventional editions, above all the problem of referencing commentary to individual entries because of the complexity of the page-layouts. On occasion, that layout is itself significant and requires commentary of a type impossible to provide by conventional means. It is therefore essential that a digital edition should be undertaken.