Location: Italy

Surname/tag: Italy



Welcome to the page for the Medieval Project's Italy team.
Contents |
Team Goals
- To improve existing Italian medieval profiles (in the medieval period this roughly equates to Holy Roman Empire) and WikiTree's coverage of medieval Italy.
- To help the Medieval Project promote medieval profiles to the wider WikiTree community.
- To identify medieval Italian profiles that need research or improvement.
Team Leadership
- Leader: TBD
- Co-ordinator: Deborah (Smith) Talbot
Please feel free to contact Deborah for advice or support.
How to Join the Team
Members of the team must have pre-1500 certification. If you do not have this, please see the pre-1500 profiles help page for more information.
To join the team, please contact one of the Medieval Project leaders. You may already be a member of the Medieval Project. If so, great! If not, we will make you a Project member at the same time as we make you a team member.
A warm thanks to everyone who wants to be part of this team.
Choosing Profiles to work on
Initially we would like to focus much of our effort on existing profiles with inadequate sourcing or questionable relationships, and on profiles where the biography needs substantial improvement. Over time we would like to build up a list of profiles that need attention using Maintenance Categories. Please help to identify them, and send details to the team coordinator.
Once you have developed and improved a profile, or while you are doing this, you may want to tackle other members of the family. It can be productive to work on a set of related people for whom some of the sources are the same.
Some members may want to work on a family line, or a specific area of medieval Italy, or focus mainly on a particular part of the medieval period. If you have a specific focus, please tell the team leader.
Collaboration and Communication
The team collaborates with the Italy Project. Particularly for the earlier medieval period, there may also be collaboration with other projects representing other countries who in the medieval period were a part of the Holy Roman Empire.
There is a Popes Project at Wikitree, which includes all popes from this medieval period.
Do use the Project's Google Group, and G2G, to seek help and advice and to invite input from others. If you have an idea for a "mini-project" on which several of us could work together, tell the team leader.
If you find a source that may help others, and that is not one of the standard medieval sources, please share it with the team! One way to do this is by adding a comment on this page. We may find it sensible to create a separate resources page for some of these sources.
Profile Management
The Medieval Project is not aiming to manage profiles unless there is a strong reason for doing so. More guidance on this is on the main Project page. If you think Project management or Project protection is needed for a profile, please contact the team leader.
Profile Improvement Checklist; Naming Standards
There is a checklist for profile improvement on the main Project page. This also has information on the naming standards we use. It will sometimes be necessary to discuss what is the best last name to use, especially for the earlier medieval period. A post on G2G linking to the profile is the best way to do it. Be sure to use all of the following tags on G2G posts: Italy, Pre-1500, and Medieval.
Project Resources
- Platina, Bartolomeo (1479) The Lives of the Popes from the Time of Our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII, London, Griffith Farran. [Translated from the Latin by Rev W Benham, Rector of St Edmund's]
- Medievalists has a number of videos by historians in the field of Medieval history that may be of value to watch.
- WikiTree Medieval Resources
- Fordham University’s Internet Medieval Sourcebook lists quality Medieval Sources for Italy.
Historical Context
The history of Italy in the Middle Ages can be roughly defined as the time between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance.
Medieval Italy can be divided into:
- Transition from Late Antiquity (6th to 8th centuries) includes the rise of the Patriarchate of Rome
- Early Middle Ages (8th to 9th centuries) includes the collapse of the Exarchate and the Frankish (Carolingian) Empire. In Southern Italy this includes the creation of independent moieties (774–849) and the period of confusion (849–915). It also includes the Saeculum Obscurum which lasted for sixty years between 904 and 964. This was the time known as the dark age of the Papacy when the popes were strongly influenced by the Theophylacti family and their allies.
- Italian states and the Holy Roman Empire
- High Middle Ages (10th-13th Centuries)
- Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (14th century to 1559)
Team Members
- Login to request to the join the Trusted List so that you can edit and add images.
- Private Messages: Contact the Profile Managers privately: Darlene Athey-Hill, Deborah Talbot, and John Atkinson. (Best when privacy is an issue.)
- Public Comments: Login to post. (Best for messages specifically directed to those editing this profile. Limit 20 per day.)
- Public Q&A: These will appear above and in the Genealogist-to-Genealogist (G2G) Forum. (Best for anything directed to the wider genealogy community.)