Toward Historical Ethnography: Notarial Records and Family History in the Middle Ages

One can easily use nineteenth-century tithe data of England and Wales in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyze a range of subjects, for example, land use, productivity, land ownership, or tenancy. Making the tithe data GIS ready, on the other hand, is a nontrivial matter. The tithe data consist of two main types: spatial, that is, the tithe map, and nonspatial attribute data linked to the map. The tithe therefore has the characteristics of a GIS, albeit in paper form. The author outlines the process of creating the structures for building a data repository that allows the storage and dissemination of both tithe schedules and maps in a single GIS-ready system. The author chose Oracle to host the repository. The Oracle Spatial module allows storage of both spatial and attribute information. Oracle also provides the means of serving data to users via the Internet.     

The Reformed Elect: Wealth, Death, and Sanctity in Gloucestershire, 1550–1640

The cleansing of the parish space in the sixteenth century provided opportunities for the laity to state the case for their own sanctity within the spaces formerly occupied by the didactic imagery of the Elect. Pietistic superiority in death, rendered in stone with reference to a popular ideal set forth in the Ars Moriendi elevated the moneyed over the living congregation. This paper compares the emphases of memorials in Gloucestershire, England, with that of selected Ars Moriendi texts in order to comprehend how wealthy patrons farmed themselves as a novel focus for popular adoration and what they hoped to achieve by doing so.