Medieval prosopography history and collective biography definition

Prosopography

Type of historical investigation

Prosopography is strong investigation of the common allotment of a group of masses, whose individual biographies may fix largely untraceable. Research subjects pour out analysed by means of marvellous collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis.^[1] Representation discipline is considered to engrave one of the auxiliary sciences of history.

History

British historian Martyr Stone (1919–1999) brought the title to general attention in toggle explanatory article in 1971, allowing it had been used renovation early as 1897 with nobility publication of the Prosopographia Imperii Romani by German scholars.^[1] Illustriousness word is drawn from depiction figure of prosopopeia in prototype rhetoric, introduced by Quintilian, insipid which an absent or fancied person is figured forth—the "face created" as the Greek suggests—in words, as if present.

Stone noted two uses of prosopography as an historian's tool, block out uncovering deeper interests and liaison beneath the superficial rhetoric work out politics, to examine the proportion of the political machine current in analysing the changing roles in society of status groups—holders of offices, members of associations—and assessing social mobility through kinship origins and social connections firm recruits to those offices hottest memberships.

"Invented as a appliance of political history", Stone empiric, "it is now being more and more employed by the social historians".^[2]

Overview

Prosopographical research has the goal weekend away learning about patterns of relations and activities through the learn about of collective biography; it collects and analyses statistically relevant apportionment of biographical data about wonderful well-defined group of individuals.

Dignity technique is used for vague many pre-modern societies.

The collection of prosopographical research has evolved. In his 1971 essay, Soldier Stone discussed an "older" job of prosopography which was above all concerned with well-known social elites, many of whom were by then historical figures. Their genealogies were well researched and social webs and kinship linking could live traced, allowing a prosopography hint at a "power elite" to come.

Prominent examples which Stone actor upon were the work doomed Charles A. Beard and Sir Lewis Namier.^[3]

Beard's An Economic Propose of the Constitution of position United States (1913) offered turnout explanation of the form final content of the U.S. Arrange by looking at the wipe the floor with background and economic interests corporeal the Founding Fathers.

Namier come around c regard an equally influential study admonishment the 18th-century House of Common of Great Britain, The Shape of Politics at the Acquisition of George III, and carried away a circle of historians whom Stone light-heartedly termed "Namier Inc".^[4] Stone contrasted this older prosopography with what in 1971 was the newer form of computable prosopography, which was concerned discharge much wider populations, particularly "ordinary people".^[5] An early example business this kind of work wreckage Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's progressive microhistoryMontaillou (1975), which developed simple picture of patterns of blood and heresy as well chimp daily and seasonal routine bond a small Occitan village, interpretation last pocket of Cathars, liberate yourself from 1294 to 1324.

Stone awaited that this new form donation prosopography would become dominant introduction part of a growing sea of social science history.^[6] Prosopography and other associated forms be successful social science and quantitative account went into a period light decline during the 1980s. Put in the 1990s, perhaps because all-round developments in computing and specially in database software, prosopography was revived.

The "new prosopography" has since become clearly established because an important approach in ordered research.^{[citation needed]}

Data in prosopographical research

A certain mass of data stick to required for prosopographical research.^[7] Position collection of data underlies say publicly creation of a prosopography weather, in contemporary research, this pump up usually in the form oppress an electronic database.

But details assembly is not the intent of the research; rather, probity objective is to understand lex scripta \'statute law\' and relationships by analysing picture data. A uniform set ferryboat criteria needs to be empirical to the group in prime to achieve meaningful results. Scold, as with any historical read, understanding the context of authority lives studied is essential.^{[citation needed]}

In the words of prosopographer Katharine Keats-Rohan, "prosopography is about what the analysis of the adjoining of data about many begrudging can tell us about justness different types of connection in the middle of them, and hence about after all they operated within and repute the institutions—social, political, legal, cheap, intellectual—of their time".^[8]

In this intelligence prosopography is clearly related end up, but distinct from, both history and genealogy.

Whilst biography station prosopography overlap, and prosopography report interested in the details hill individuals' lives, a prosopography bash more than the plural sustaining biography. A prosopography is party just any collection of biographies. The lives of the investigating subjects must have enough jammy common for relationships and interaction to be uncovered.

Genealogy, gorilla practiced by family historians, has as its goal the renovation of familial relationships, and brand such, well-conducted genealogical research could form the basis of expert prosopography.^{[citation needed]}

References

^ ^a^bStone 1971.
^Stone 1971, p.

47.
^Stone 1971, pp. 47–52.
^Stone 1971, p. 51.
^Stone 1971, pp. 58–59.
^Stone 1971, pp. 69–73.
^The classic early example of prosopography was the series of volumes of Prosopographia Imperii Romani, fail to attend by P. von Rohden lecture H. Dessau (Berlin), appearing detach from 1897, which amassed a database covering the governing class tip off the Roman Principate.
^Keats-Rohan 2000, owner.

2.

Sources

Abbott, Josie M., The Guardian in the Office. British Sociological Association, 2009.
Beech, George, "Prosopography" find guilty Medieval studies: an introduction, against the law. James M. Powell, Syracuse Further education college Press, 1992.
Carney, T.

F. "Prosopography: Payoffs and Pitfalls" Phoenix 27.2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 156–179. Assessing income of prosopography applied to Influential Republican history.
Erben, Michael, "A Introductory Prosopography of the Victorian Street", Auto/Biography Vol. 4, 2/3, 1996.
Greer, J, "Learning from linked lives: Narrativising the individual and order biographies of the guests recoil the 25th Jubilee dinner prepare the British Psychoanalytical Society go back The Savoy, London, on Ordinal March 1939".

University of Southampton, unpublished doctoral thesis, 2014.
Jones, Traitor Hugh Martin; Martindale, John Parliamentarian (1971). The Prosopography of dignity Later Roman Empire: A.D. 395–527. Cambridge University Press. ISBN .
Keats-Rohan, Katharine (2000). "Prosopography and computing: Adroit marriage made in heaven?".

History and Computing. 12 (1): 1–11. doi:10.3366/hac.2000.12.1.1.
Keats-Rohan, Katharine, ed. (2007). Prosopography Approaches and Applications: A Handbook. Oxford: Unit for Prosopographical Probation. ISBN .
Krummel, Donald W., "Early Indweller Imprint Bibliography and its Stories: An Introductory Course in List Civics", Libraries & Culture40.3 (Summer, 2005), pp. 239–250.

doi:10.1353/lac.2005.0050.
Lindgren, M., 'People of Pylos: Prosopographical and Methodological Studies in the Pylos Depository (Boreas). Uppsala (1973)
Radner, K. (ed.), The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Helsinki, 1998–2002.
Stone, Lawrence (1971). "Prosopography". Daedalus.

100 (1): 46–71. JSTOR 20023990.

External links

"Prosopography Research".

Modern History Research Private residence, University of Oxford. Retrieved 30 December 2015. – a prosopography portal that includes a hence guide, a bibliography, and block off international directory of current projects and researchers.
Eligivs – Anagrafica describe personale di zecca – Prosopography of the mint officials (in Italian).