RI-Online – Regesta Imperii Online

Link: http://www.regesta-imperii.de [15. 05. 2013]

The project „Regesta Imperii“ (RI) was started in the 19th century by Friedrich Böhmer (1795–1863) and is now one of the most extensive collections of data relating to the history of Europe. It aims at opening up diplomatic and historiographic sources for the history of the Holy Roman Empire from the time of the Carolingians to Emperor Maximilian I (751–1519) as well as for papal history in the early and high Middle Ages. The online-version “RI-Online” covers the contents of all volumes that have been published since 1839, accompanied by indices specially provided for the digital edition.
RI-Online currently holds more than 125 000 entries, with regesta of recently printed volumes being included immediately after publishing. Under the heading „Materialien“ additional material, such as introductory chapters, indices and cross-reference lists, as well as data from work-in-progress (e.g. a database of the charters of Emperor Frederick III.) is supplied. The database of regesta is complemented by the “RI-Opac”, a bibliographical database that covers all disciplines of mediaeval research in the whole of Europe. It currently contains more than 1,6 Mio titles, a great number of which were published as articles and papers in journals, catalogues and collections of proceedings.

RI-Online has been processed by a special editorial department of Regesta Imperii at the Academy of Sciences and Literature at Mainz since 2001. In 2009 the database of the charters of Emperor Frederick III. and a module of supplements were added. The entire RI-database was relaunched in 2012. Volumes published in print are immediately made available online.

For administrative parts of the website German or English can be chosen, whereas the regesta are in German only.

There is an option between a simple full-text search and a more detailed professional search („Expertensuche“) according to key words or phrases, dates or numbers of regesta, which can be executed in all volumes or be restricted to special series or single volumes or even to certain parts of the database (texts of the regesta, commentaries or supplementary material).

Users are invited to add supplementary notes or corrections to the database, which are made available (via simple full-text and professional search) to other users after examination by the editors. It is also possible for users to suggest additions to the bibliographical database RI-Opac.

All services provided by RI-Online are free and do not require login.