Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Carolingian Canon Law, the Inquisition's Courts, and Kentucky!

A press release from the University of Kentucky, announcing the receipt by Abigail Firey, of Kentucky's history department, of an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship, has drawn my attention to the Carolingian Canon Law Project, which is described on its website thus:
The Carolingian Canon Law project is producing a searchable, electronic rendition of major works of Carolingian canon law, in a presentation that shows their relation to other works of canon law used by Carolingian jurists. This project maps the extent of variation in "standard" legal texts known to Carolingian jurists, and identifies particular points of variation. In addition to clarifying the textual history of medieval canon law, the project will provide historical and bibliographic annotation of several hundred canons used by jurists before, during, and after the Carolingian period.
The same press release notes that another member of Kentucky's department, Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, has won "a Philosophical Society Fellowship to continue her comparative study of early modern courts of the Inquisition in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Mexico." Professor Starr-LeBeau says of her research:
I really became interested in how those convicted in the Inquisition defended themselves and the strategies they used. . . . For my latest project, I'll be comparing court records throughout Spain, Venice, Lisbon and Mexico City.