Digital prosopography and Ireland’s Catholic clergy

Clericus is a digital humanities project based at Maynooth University's Arts and Humanities Institute. It fills a long-standing gap in digital humanities research resourcing, namely the provision of a robust digital platform capable of accommodating the diverse and often fragmentary biographical information typical of professional cohorts and of migrant populations. To achieve this end, Clericus chose the biographical information of students of two educational institutions, Maynooth College and St Kieran’ College Kilkenny, both Irish seminaries founded in the late eighteenth century. In an initial pilot project, the project team undertook the digitization of the yearly graduation class photographic record (‘class-piece’) of Maynooth College students. Methodological and technical changes were introduced as the pilot advanced. Through the pilot and subsequent work packages, the project established a comprehensive digital prosopography database of over 32,000 biographical entries, drawn from 183 class portraits, all of which are digitally captured in their original format. The project also developed a publicly accessible digital biography infrastructure. In the process, it delivered a significant piece of cultural heritage preservation. The Clericus model provides a guiding framework for leveraging digital innovation in contemporary humanities research and cultural preservation initiatives.