ABSTRACT
WP3 developed T-ReS (Toolkit for Religious Studies), a toolkit composed of two complementary software tools – CRITERION and GNORM – designed to address concrete needs of the scholarly community in Religious Studies: the production of critical editions of texts and the analysis of complex normative corpora. By integrating philological expertise and computational methods into a single environment, T-ReS supports both traditional scholarly workflows and new forms of digital analysis, making advanced text processing accessible even to scholars without specialised technical skills.
RESULTS AND TOOLS
CRITERION (CRItical Text Editing and RepresentatION tool) is a free and open-source software for the creation of critical editions in both print and digital formats, available on all major operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux). It offers a scholar‑centred, near‑WYSIWYG environment focused on page‑stable printed critical editions, allowing users to work with texts, apparatuses, and metadata without needing direct XML or LaTeX expertise. The tool provides an intuitive workspace for managing texts, critical apparatuses, and annotations, supporting the entire workflow from transcription to publication. Its JSON‑based internal data model and export to TEI‑XML ensure interoperability with digital humanities workflows, while an automated LaTeX backend generates high‑quality PDF output and still allows advanced users to access the intermediate .tex files. Its main functionalities cover the management of textual variants and witnesses, multi-level annotation, automatic index generation, print preview and high-quality PDF export, support for standard scholarly formats, and a collaborative workspace for shared editing and revision. In this way, CRITERION bridges the gap between traditional philological practice and existing digital tools, lowering technical barriers for individual scholars and small teams while remaining fully open‑source and cross‑platform.
GNORM is a platform for the collection, organisation, and analysis of religious normative texts, combining automated language analysis and advanced data processing techniques to identify conceptual links across stratified textual traditions. For the Corpus Iuris Canonici in particular, GNORM builds on extensive corpus revision and normalisation work and employs a modular NLP pipeline – including preprocessing, domain‑specific entity recognition, exact and approximate string matching, and reference normalisation – to detect and structure explicit and implicit canonical references across the corpus. The system supports navigation through texts and glosses, querying of complex and layered materials, and visualisation of textual stratification over time, thus enhancing the exploration of large and heterogeneous normative corpora. GNORM is designed to support the analysis of complex normative traditions and to enhance the accessibility of stratified textual corpora.
CASE STUDIES
GNORM has been tested on different normative corpora to demonstrate its capacity to handle stratified legal and religious traditions in diverse historical contexts.
Corpus Iuris Canonici
In the case of the Corpus Iuris Canonici, GNORM allows users to explore networks of norms, glosses, and commentaries, reproducing in a digital environment the interpretative processes of the medieval legal tradition.
Talmud babilonese (Bavli)
For the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli), and in particular the tractate Rosh HaShanah, GNORM integrates an automatic translation system from Aramaic into English, a chronological ordering of sources (from the Bible to the Tannaim and Amoraim), and an interactive timeline visualising the development of halakhah (Jewish legal tradition). In this case study, GNORM uses a machine‑readable edition of the tractate and a dedicated tagging scheme for different categories and generations of sources to support a literal LLM‑based translation and a diachronic visualisation of halakhic discussions.
These case studies demonstrate how the platform can be adapted to different normative traditions while preserving their internal stratification and historical depth.
TEAM
WP3 was led by Alberto Melloni (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia–FSCIRE), with Federico Alpi (FSCIRE) as product owner. GNORM development involved Vincenzo Roberto Imperia (University of Palermo) and Andrea Ravasco (University of Palermo), together with Arianna Pavone (University of Palermo), who contributed to both case studies (Corpus Iuris Canonici and Talmud Bavli). The team brought together expertise in Church history, canon law, Jewish studies, and digital humanities, ensuring a close alignment between domain-specific requirements and technological design.
BEYOND ITSERR
The tools developed in WP3 are designed to be applicable across disciplines working with primary sources and stratified textual traditions. CRITERION can be used in both editorial and academic contexts for the collaborative production of critical editions in any field dealing with primary sources. Its open-source nature and support for standard formats make it suitable for integration into existing scholarly workflows and digital infrastructures. GNORM can also be applied in legal and jurisprudential contexts, thanks to its ability to navigate normative texts in their historical development, visualise their stratification, and automatically recognise textual sections. More broadly, it provides a model for analysing complex normative corpora in other religious, legal, and institutional traditions beyond the specific ITSERR use cases.