Sources and Persons of Public Power in 7th-11th Century Italy: The Idea of Italia Regia and the Italia Regia Project.

Italia Regia is an on-line system whose purpose is the digitalisation and restitution on the web of the documents issued by the rulers (kings, emperors) in the Italian kingdom between the 7th and the end of the 11th century. Its elaboration is the result of an international cooperation involving French, Italian and German researchers. The core of the work is a relational and dynamic database enabling corrections and amendments at any time, providing four types of forms: royal charters, records of legal disputes, individuals, and bibliography. Since the technical infrastructure was created in recent years of the project and is already operational (tested successfully on the documentation of Tuscany), the project now intends to cover the whole of the north of Italy (the main region of the Italian kingdom), in order to give access to new information about all public documents during the period. By using this tool, researchers will be able to discern a number of phenomena simultaneously: 1) the global distribution, on the territory of the Italian kingdom, of the documentation issued by the royal power or by public agents; 2) the recipients as a whole of the entirety of the preserved public documents; 3) the individuals as a whole involved in the genesis of public writings, at any level, with or without an official title. Finally, Italia Regia offers a technical and scientific model which could be extended to other European regions.