The Indo‐European mirror: Monotheism and polytheism (J.G. Herder,E. Renan,A. Pictet,F.M. Müller and R.F. Grau)

Some authors assigned the Indo‐Europeans a mirror‐like role which allowed them to understand their own position with respect to contemporary Christian values. After dealing briefly with the writings of J.G. Herder, I shall evoke a certain number of questions which oriented the research of E. Renan, F.M. Müller, A. Pictet and R.F. Grau. The works of the latter authors expounded fabulous genealogies, organizing them into explanatory systems that radically opposed Hebrew monotheists to Indo‐European polytheists. Thus, depending on whether they had used the Semites or the Indo‐Europeans as their starting‐point, they concluded that monotheism or polytheism, respectively, was the archaic source of human thought. The goal on their horizon was a ressuscitated West, forever in the forefront of progress, often simultaneously Christian and scientific. If this type of historiographic analysis is urgently needed at the present time, its purpose is not to provide a grid for distinguishing “truth”; from “falsehood,”; but rather to grasp a set of scholarly traditions within its own channels of transmission.     

David Warren Sabean. Landbesitz und Gesellschaft am Vorabend des Bauernkriegs: Eine Studie der sozialen Verhältnisse im südlichen Oberschwaben in den Jahren vor 1525

In conventional approaches to computer analysis of historical sources, one must represent the data in structured formats in which content and context are discarded. Extensible markup language (XML), developed for data transfer on the Internet, permits preservation of the full text of irregular historical sources without sacrificing the ability to conduct systematic analysis. Related querying tools offer most functions of a relational database management system, including data transformation facilities for coding, standardizing, and aggregating nominal data. An XML database permits multiple interpretations of the data because the unit of analysis and the coding schemes are not defined at entry. In a case study of probate inventories, the author demonstrates how structured analysis of domestic interiors can be performed and introduces approaches to studying semistructured data.