Point of departure

Included are narrative sources and memorial registers from the period until 1580 that had a function in the region of the present-day Netherlands.

Please note: Text carriers containing a narrative source concerning memoria in the Netherlands, but that have always functioned in institutions outside the Netherlands, are not included if text carriers exist with the same narrative source that have functioned within the Netherlands. For this reason several ‘foreign’ copies of the Chronicon Windeshemense have not been included.

Included are:

• Manuscripts which are strictly speaking not registers of gifts (but for instance registers of revenues), but which do contain many entries which are actually gifts, see MeMO text carrier ID 165
• Cartularies with lists of names of commemorated persons, in which the copied charters are referenced, see MeMO text carrier ID 142
• Memorial registers consisting of lists of names that have not (yet) been confirmed to have had a function in the commemoration of the dead, see 4.4and MeMO text carrier ID 160
• Manuscripts with narrative sources and memorial registers with dates like ‘last quarter of the sixteenth century’, because these may still fall within the research period range of the MeMO project, see MeMO text carrier ID 20
• Manuscripts with one or more memorial registers dated before 1580, which have only survived in manuscripts which date from after 1580, see MeMO text carrier ID 344. In one case a text carrier has been included that dates from after 1580, but which contains a more extensive version of the text regarding events prior to 1580. MeMO text carrier ID 287 is a late seventeenth century manuscript containing amongst others a copy of the Chronicle of the Abbots of Aduard. This version offers the most reliable text concerning the years 1528-1578.
• Text carriers or texts which only exist as an edition now, because the original manuscipts have been lost, see MeMO text carrier ID 291

Not included are:

• Short overviews of for instance deceased family members in books of hours, prayer books and in missals. These have not yet been sufficiently inventoried, which means that a thorough overview cannot be given in MeMO.
• Memorial registers which were probably created based on compiled archival sources. To name an example, several lists of names in the historiographical manuscripts of Buchelius (Monumenta, Inscriptiones, etc.) have not been included because these lists probably belong to this category.
• Hagiographies, because the MeMO database is intended for the commemoration of normal, sinful souls. The biographies of borderline cases like Geert Grote have been included, see MeMO text carrier ID 243.
• Text carriers that are dated circa or after 1580, if there is a similar narrative source that is also transmitted in an older text carrier. Information on such later text carriers is described under ‘Filiation’ in the database.