Rebellion manuscripts go digital

AT TRINITY College Dublin, 1641 is coming face to face with 2009, to the benefit of scholars but also the public.

A set of priceless manuscripts – aged, coffee-coloured and covered in the looping, spidery scrawl of many different 17th-century hands – is to emerge as a cutting-edge semantic web and documentation project accessible by all online.

The manuscripts are the famous – or, depending on your view, infamous – 1641 Depositions, eight volumes of 1,559 personal accounts of one of the most violent moments in Irish history, the 1641 Rebellion.
The depositions – witness statements taken mostly from Protestants – describe incidents of murder, rape and pillage but also many aspects of everyday life in the 1600s.
This rich material is valued by social, religious, historical and political researchers but is also the source of hundreds of years of bitter dispute over the truthfulness of the events described. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

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