Its ultimate goal is to identify the social networks that took shape within the chosen
period and geographical area—initially, the territories along the Cantabrian coast at the
end of the Middle Ages.
HILAME also serves as a digital resource and information hub, as well as an open forum for discussion and research in the field of Digital Humanities.
The project originated as part of the research initiative From the Factions’ Wars to
Universal Nobility: Social, Political and Ideological Transformations in the Basque
Country (14th and 15th Centuries) (HAR2013-44093-P), developed by the
Consolidated Research Group of the Basque University System (A) Society, Power and
Culture (14th–18th Centuries) (IT-896-16) and the Associated Unit CSIC/UPV-EHU
Research Group on the Medieval Rural World.
Today, HILAME forms part of the project Violence and Social Transformations in the
North-East of the Crown of Castile (1200–1525), funded by the State Research Agency,
MICINN (ref. PID2021-124356NB-I00), under the direction of Principal Investigators
José Ramón Díaz de Durana and Jon Andoni Fernández de Larrea Rojas. It also belongs
to the research group Societies, Processes, Cultures (8th–18th Centuries) at the
UPV/EHU, led by Principal Investigator José Ramón Díaz de Durana, with Francesca
Tinti as co-PI. The group’s research excellence has been recognized by the Basque Government’s Department of Education through the Grants to Support Research Group Activities in the Basque University System, 2022–2025 (IT 1465-22).
HILAME draws inspiration from a project by Juan Carlos de Guerra, a genealogist and
heraldist from Gipuzkoa. In 1930, he published Oñacinos y gamboinos. Rol de
banderizos vascos, which included a list of families who lived in Bilbao during the 14th
and 15th centuries, based on medieval censuses and the principal work of Lope García de Salazar (Guerra, 1930). The importance of this project led us to include it in HILAME as a secondary database, accessible both independently and through
integrated consultation.
Some years later, Don Julio Caro Baroja presented his Project for the Compilation of a
File on Medieval Basque Toponymy and Anthroponymy (Caro Baroja, 1949). Like many other projects conceived by the Sage of Itzea, it was never completed, although
important advances have since been made. One such effort comes from Euskaltzaindia,
the Royal Academy of the Basque Language, whose Onomastics Commission has
fostered this line of research through its Onomasticon Vasconiae series and its Basque
Onomastic Database (EODA). This nomenclator includes personal names, surnames, toponyms, and exonyms in the Basque language.
In the final decade of the 20th century, Ángeles Líbano Zumalacárregui collaborated
with Euskaltzaindia, working under the influence of Caro Baroja and Professor García de Cortázar, among others. Her work culminated in the monumental Medieval
Toponymy in the Basque Country (Líbano Zumalacárregui, 1995–2000), later incorporated into the Academy’s databases. This project would eventually lead to the
Corpus On-Line de Vasconia, also developed by Líbano, a member of Society, Power,
Culture, our original research group.
Models
The design of HILAME was informed by an analysis of several international
prosopographical databases (Dacosta and Díaz de Durana, 2016). While there are many
outstanding examples, our study focused on projects dedicated to the medieval period
that have developed advanced, publicly accessible search interfaces:
• Operation Charles VI
• Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit (PMBZ)
• The Soldier in Later Medieval England
• The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE)
• The People of Medieval Scotland, 1093–1314 (POMS)
• Prosopography of the Byzantine World (PBW)
The last three, created by researchers and technicians at King’s College London and
other British institutions, have proved especially inspiring to us, particularly in their use
and development of the concept of the factoid.
Methodology
HILAME employs several complementary methodological approaches. From a global
perspective, it seeks to integrate historical research processes into an ecoinformatics
project—beyond the functionality of its databases—through innovations in data
management and the use of design thinking.
Regarding data processing, the methodology is based on managing information through
two key concepts: context and factoid.
Context refers to the textual fragment extracted from a written source of the late
medieval period that contains a specific piece of information. In linguistic and literary
databases, such as the Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE), the use of context is
indispensable. In our project, it serves two essential purposes: first, it allows researchers
to work directly with the information as transmitted in the original text; and second, it
enables other scholars and users to verify the processed data within its original context.
Factoid is a concept introduced by Dion Smythe in the Prosopography of the Byzantine
Empire (PBE) and later adopted in PBW. It refers to “an assertion about an individual in
a source, presented in the source as true. Rather than struggling over terminology and
whether these assertions were true (for what after all is truth?) and therefore ‘facts’, this
allowed us to record factoids from the sources without establishing their positivist truth”
(Smythe, 2007: 130).
Although ostensibly neutral, the factoid implies a categorization of the information
found in medieval testimonies referring to individuals. It also entails the normalization
of that information—from linguistic aspects to digital tagging. This demanding task
depends, to a large extent, on the informed and legitimate decisions made by the team of
researchers, the prosopographers (Tinti, 2003).
The project is structured in four phases. The first, currently under way, focuses on
implementing the database and the information and services portal, based on data from a single territory—the Lordship of Biscay.
In the second phase, the work will expand to include the remaining territories of the
present-day Basque Country.
In the third phase, data collection will be extended to cover the territories along the
Cantabrian coast, incorporating the Kingdom of Navarre.
Finally, in the fourth phase, the project will open to other Iberian or extra-Iberian
territories.
We have already begun exploring the interaction with other regions and materials,
particularly those related to lineages of local and interregional significance within the
Crown of Castile, such as the Velasco family and its client networks.
Ethics: Towards Convergence in the Digital Humanities
HILAME was conceived as a project committed to convergence with others in the field
of Digital Humanities. As Benoît Cursente (2008: 85) observed, “although there
currently exist almost as many computer databases as there are researchers, the
launching of collective projects is still very timid.”
This observation should encourage us to overcome our reluctance—“rightly jealous of
their information,” as Hélène Millet once noted (1987: 66)—and what Bruno Boute
humorously called the “me and my database syndrome” (2002: 35).
We share the view expressed by Christophe Charle, who proposed that every
prosopography, every database, should aspire to be “le maillon d’une chaîne
cumulative” (1985: 242)—a link in a cumulative chain. Beyond the technical
challenges, such a network is not only possible but necessary. It is also a duty, since
projects like this one—except for a few rare cases—are largely supported by the work
of university staff and public funding.
In 2019, we began pursuing this convergence, as previously announced (Dacosta and
Jular, 2020). It has since taken shape through Scripta manent, directed by Cristina Jular
Pérez-Alfaro (CSIC), another project funded under the National Research Plan. The
foundation for this collaboration lies, on one hand, in the extraction of prosopographical
information from unpublished charters in the Archivo Histórico de la Nobleza (Jular,
2018), and on the other, in experimentation with new data-uploading protocols.
HILAME is also an active member of Humanidades En Común, a collaborative open-
science initiative and research hub created in 2023. This network brings together
projects that share the goal of making their relational databases interoperable and of
combining human and technical resources to enhance the communication of academic
activities, scientific dissemination, and knowledge transfer.
Boute, Bruno (2002): “Towards more uniform database structures for prosopographical research: work in progress in University history – the example of the Lovanienses Database”. En K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (ed.). Resourcing Sources. The Use of Computers in Developing Prosopographical Methodology. Oxford: University of Oxford, 35-48.
Caro Baroja, Julio (1949): “Proyecto para la elaboración del fichero de Toponimia y Antroponimia vasca medieval”. Boletín de la Real Sociedad Vascongada de Amigos del País, 5: 381-385.
Cursente, Benoît (2008): “Tendencias recientes de la historia rural de la Francia Medieval”. En Alfonso, Isabel (ed.). La historia rural de las sociedades medievales europeas: Tendencias y perspectivas. Valencia: P.U.V., 65-96.
Charle, Christophe (1985): “Problèmes de traitement informatique d’une enquête sur trois élites en 1901. En Millet, Hélène (ed.). Informatique et prosopographie. París: CNRS, 233-246.
Dacosta, Arsenio; Díaz de Durana, José Ramón (2016): “Prosopografía y bases de datos. Desafíos teóricos y metodológicos para el estudio de la Edad Media”. En Carrasco Manchado, Ana Isabel (ed). El Historiador frente a las palabras. Lugo: Editorial Axac, en prensa.
Dacosta, Arsenio; Jular, Teresa (2018): “Hidalgos en la escalera del diseño”, en A. Dacosta, C. Jular y J. R. Díaz de Durana (eds.). Hidalgos e hidalguía en la Península Ibérica (siglos XII–XV). Madrid: Marcial Pons, 429-446.
Dacosta, Arsenio; Jular, Teresa (2020): “HILAME ante los desafíos de las humanidades digitales: convergencia e interoperabilidad”, en Sandra de la Torre, Ekaitz Etxeberria y José Ramón Díaz de Durana (eds.).Valer más en la tierra. Poder, violencia y linaje en el País Vasco bajomedieval. Madrid: Sílex, 85-97.
Guerra, Juan Carlos de (1930): Oñacinos y gamboinos. Rol de banderizos vascos, con la mención de las familias pobladoras de Bilbao en los siglos XIV y XV. San Sebastián: Baroja.
Jular, Cristina (2018): “¿Hidalgos libres, hidalgos acostados? Entre padrones, memoriales y matrículas: el registro señorial de la hidalguía”, en A. Dacosta, C. Jular y J. R. Díaz de Durana (eds.). Hidalgos e hidalguía en la Península Ibérica (siglos XII–XV). Madrid: Marcial Pons, 89-128.
Jular, Teresa; Dacosta, Arsenio (2018): “HILAME (Hidalgos, Labradoras, Mercaderes): procesamiento y visualización de datos prosopográficos’, en Humanidades Digitales. Miradas hacia la Edad Media, Berlin, Boston, De Gruyter, 79-89.
Líbano Zumalacárregui, Mª Ángeles (1995-2000): Toponimia Medieval en el País Vasco. Bilbao: Euskaltzaindia, 1995-2000, 4 vols.
Millet, Hélène (1987): “From sources to data. The construction of a prosopographical data-bank”. En Denley, Peter; Hopkin, Deian (eds.). History and computing. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 63-67.
Smythe, Dion C. (2007): “`A Whiter Shade of Pale: Issues and Possibilities in Prosopography”. En Keats-Rohan, Katharine S.B. (ed.). Prosopography Approaches and Applications: A Handbook. Oxford: University of Oxford, 127-137.
Tinti, Francesca (2003): “Facing Factoids”. Paper presentado en el King’s College London, Second PASE Colloquium, 26 April 2003. Disponible en esta misma sede web.