Marino Sanudo's Diary

Introductions

The project focused on analyzing the diaries of Marino Sanudo, a key historical source for understanding the Renaissance period. The primary goal was to create an index of people and places mentioned in the diaries, pair these entities, and analyze the potential relationships between them.

Historical Context

Who Was Marino Sanudo? Marino Sanudo (1466–1536) was a Venetian historian, diarist, and politician whose extensive diaries, Diarii, provide a meticulous chronicle of daily life, politics, and events in Renaissance Venice. Sanudo devoted much of his life to recording the intricacies of Venetian society, governance, and international relations, making him one of the most significant chroniclers of his era.

The Importance of His Diaries Sanudo’s Diarii span nearly four decades, comprising 58 volumes of detailed observations. These writings offer invaluable insights into the political maneuvers of the Venetian Republic, social customs, and the geographical scope of Renaissance trade and diplomacy. His work captures not only significant historical events but also the daily rhythms of Venetian life, painting a vivid picture of one of the most influential states of the time.

Relevance Today Studying Marino Sanudo’s diaries remains highly relevant for modern historians, linguists, and data analysts. They provide a primary source for understanding Renaissance politics, diplomacy, and social hierarchies. Furthermore, the diaries’ exhaustive detail lends itself to contemporary methods of analysis, such as network mapping and data visualization, enabling new interpretations and uncovering hidden patterns in historical relationships. By examining the interconnectedness of individuals and places, Sanudo’s work sheds light on the broader dynamics of Renaissance Europe, offering lessons that resonate even in today’s globalized world.

Project Plan and Milestones

The project was organized on a weekly basis to ensure steady progress and a balanced workload. Each phase was carefully planned with clearly defined objectives and milestones, promoting effective collaboration and equitable division of tasks among team members.

The first milestone (07.10 - 13.10) involved deciding on the project's focus. After thorough discussions, we collectively chose to analyze Marino Sanudo’s diaries, given their historical significance and potential for data-driven exploration. This phase established a shared understanding of the project and laid the foundation for subsequent work.

The second milestone (14.10) focused on optimizing the extraction of indexes for names and places from the diaries. This required refining our methods for data extraction and ensuring accuracy in capturing and categorizing entities. Alongside this, we worked on identifying the geolocations of the places mentioned in the index, using historical and modern mapping tools to ensure precise identification.

The final stages of the project (19.12)marked the transition to analyzing relationships between the extracted names and places. Using the indexed data, we explored potential connections, identifying patterns and trends that revealed insights into Renaissance Venice's social, political, and geographic networks. . We collaboratively built a Wikipedia page to document our research and created a dedicated website to present our results in an accessible and visually engaging manner. This phase also included preparing for the final presentation, ensuring that every team member contributed to summarizing and showcasing the work.

By adhering to this structured approach and dividing tasks equitably, we achieved a comprehensive analysis of Sanudo’s diaries, combining historical research with modern digital tools to uncover new insights into his world.

Workflow

Week	Task
07.10 - 13.10	Define project and structure work
14.10 - 20.10	Manually write a place index Understand index structure
21.10 - 27.10	Autumn vacation
28.10 - 03.11	Work on the name dataset Start to find geolocation
04.11 - 10.11	Finish the geolocation Quality check Prepare for the presentation
11.11 - 17.11	Midterm presentation on 14.11
18.11 - 24.11	Find naive relationship
25.11 - 01.12	Standardization of the text
02.12 - 08.12	Find relationship based on the distance Define the kind of relationship
09.12 - 15.12	Finish writing the wiki Prepare the presentation
16.12 - 22.12	Deliver GitHub + wiki on 18.12 Final presentation on 19.12