This week, we had our kick-off meeting! It is a great fun to gather all the partners from the Netherlands, Spain and France.
This is the occasion to give some specific information about our corpus, aka “the Chancery corpus” or short “Chancery”. It already encompasses the high resolution digitized images of the registers from the French royal chancery, covering the period from 1211 to 1363, with the shelfmarks Paris, Archives nationales, JJ 7 to JJ 91. The full inventory is online : http://www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/chan/chan/fonds/EGF/SA/SAPDF/egfn_j.pdf and a fair part of this collection is already freely available to the public on the website of the French National Archive with more detailled descriptions for each volume from JJ 7 to JJ 56 (see http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/archim/tresor-chartes.html).
For our team, the core corpus only covers the period 1302-1363 with the registers stricto sensu, but wouldn’t it be a pity to let the first part of the digitized material without indexation?
We are very happy to thank the French National Archive for its very generous and ongoing support. Not only they provide us with full resolution images for our scientific research, but they keep digitizing. In two years from now, the HIMANIS team and the Archives nationales will be glad to let everyone search directly in the text of this wonderful resource!
As for now, how should we start? Is there a better way than quoting the first charter of the first volume (JJ 35, fol. 5r), the reform order of 1303, whose preamble is all about starting a new way of life?
Nos, Philippus Dei gratia Francorum rex, pro reformatione regni nostri, quod retroactis temporibus gravatum extitit adversitatibus temporum et guerrarum ac pluribus aliis contrariosis eventibus, deliberatione provida fecimus aliquas ordinationes et statuta utilia et salubria pro gubernatione ac bono statu regni predicti, pro pace etiam ac transquillitate subjectorum nostrorum, sicut inferius continetur…