Access, Archive, Memory: Some Insights from the MAMEMS Prosopographical Database

This lecture explores challenges in working with monastic archives in order to create a prosopographical database cataloging every Athos-related person in the Middle Ages: the MAMEMS Prosopographical Database. While the vast majority of the material included in the database consists of legal documents published from Athonite archives in the series Archives de l’Athos, other texts are much less straightforward, at multiple levels.

One particularly important group of sources in this context are commemorative lists: lists of deceased persons to be memorialized in the liturgy. Such lists, which are often simply series of names with no discernible chronological, geographical or other context, can sometimes only be evaluated on a speculative basis (onomastics, relation to other names, patterns in names). As documents that in some instances still have a contemporary liturgical use, they also represent far more sensitive material than, for instance, medieval legal transactions with no present-day ramifications. Moreover, commemorative lists are not the only texts in monastic archives that possess a contemporary relevance – this is also the case for Hagiorite vitae and other hagiographical compositions.

Another aspect of dealing with the Athonite tradition this lecture will consider are the challenges of converting written material onto a digital platform. Again, the incorporation of certain types of materials, including commemorative lists and hagiographical texts, poses questions that go beyond the evaluation of more traditional written sources like legal documents or historiography.

About the speaker: Zachary Chitwood has been Professor of Byzantine Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) of Munich since 2024. From 2020 to 2025 he was the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Project “Mount Athos in Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Society: Contextualizing the History of a Monastic Republic (ca. 850–1550)” (MAMEMS) project, which sought to situate the communities of the Holy Mountain as part of the as independent actors in medieval Eastern Mediterranean society.

Professor Chitwood’s Athos-related publications consist, alongside individual essays, principally of three edited volumes stemming from the MAMEMS project, dedicated to the broader topics of the economy (Wealth and Poverty on Medieval Mount Athos. Leiden 2025), cultural belonging (Between Polyglossia and Polyethnia: Ethnicity and Identity on Premodern Mount Athos. Leiden forthcoming) and gender (A Special Relationship? Gender on Premodern Mount Athos. In preparation). In addition, he is completing a prosopographical database documenting all Athos-related persons until ca. 1550. 

This lecture is the keynote of the Athonite Collections and Their Challenges: Scholarly Access and Digital Surrogates symposium, September 25-26, 2026.