Open Access

Maximilian de Molière

• This thesis presents a comprehensive approach to the editorial conception and technical implementation of a text-critical online edition of Hebrew letters, the correspondence of Moses Zacuto, a prominent seventeenth-century Kabbalist. It integrates historical research, editorial theory, and practical digital humanities methodologies to develop a digital edition that is both scholarly rigorous and accessible. The study begins with a historical background on Moses Zacuto, detailing his life, works, and the significance of his epistolary communications within the context of seventeenth-century Jewish scholarship and mysticism. It examines the materiality of the letters, including writing materials, script, page layout, addresses, and transmission methods, to highlight the socio-cultural and practical aspects of early modern Jewish correspondence and how they are relevant to the creation of the digital edition. Building on this historical foundation, the thesis delves into the theory of editing, particularly the unique challenges and methodologies involved in digital editions. It contrasts traditional text editing with the requirements of editing epistolary documents and emphasizes the importance of user-centered design in creating digital scholarly resources. The technical implementation chapter details the data models used for letters, persons, places, works, and manuscripts, and outlines the process from manuscript to TEI-XML file. It describes the use of tools like Airtable for metadata collection, Transkribus and eScriptorium for automatic transcription, LERA for algorithmic collation of textual witnesses, and TEI-Publisher for entity encoding. It also describes in detail how the digital edition provides comprehensive access to the letter texts, along with indexes for persons, places, and works, enhancing the usability and scholarly value of the corpus. The thesis concludes with a discussion on the merits of the digital edition.