Digital Pathways to the Past : Reconstructing the Historiographic Landscape of Medieval Church Documents through Digital Archives

This study aims to systematically analyze and evaluate the encoding standards, annotation strategies, and database structures employed in the digitization of medieval church documents, using the Digital Vatican Library, Monasterium.net, and Alvin as case studies. It seeks to explore how digital tools can represent and restore historical context, enhance metadata interpretation, and support sustainable and collaborative research in digital historiography and church history. By integrating digital humanities perspectives with archival theory, this research proposes a conceptual framework for the structured preservation and interpretation of ecclesiastical records in the digital age. The findings show that the metadata of digital archives tends to be fragmented and absolutized when presenting and interpreting the historical and cultural context of medieval church documents. The existing encoding methods and annotation strategies depend on factors such as the academic purpose of the digital archive, the nature of the institution, and the types of documents stored. Each of the three digital archives has its own strengths and limitations. Therefore, this study argues that the methods and practices of digital church archives should be improved by optimizing current encoding approaches, integrating multiple encoding standards alongside a highly compatible primary one, and developing customized annotation strategies.