News & Publications

Helen Davies, Katie Albers-Morris, Alex Zawacki, and Evan Gatti led an MSI workshop at the 2025 Digital Medieval Studies Institute following the IMC Leeds. This workshop introduced different levels of MSI capturing and processing, ranging from the more high-end systems to more affordable and portable systems like the MISHA, or Ghost Camera. Attendees also had the opportunity to learn how to use accessible processing systems like Hoku and r-Chive.

Katie Albers-Morris and Evan Gatti led a talk during the Digital Approaches to Materiality of Manuscripts, I: Classrooms session at the 2025 IMC Leeds. During this presentation Katie and Evan discussed how the Videntes team organized and held the 2024 Medieval Manuscripts in a Modern World DH institute in Vercelli. This included explaining the process of collaboration between Videntes and the Museo del Tesoro del Duomo and the Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli, and the different skills targeted by daily sessions.

A new MSI tool-kit project developed by Helen Davies with Prof. Larry Eames and Evangela Dudeck through the Center for Research Frontiers in the Digital Humanities at UCCS is now available online! This project aims to share an affordable MSI process, the Ghost Camera, to audiences beyond the traditional elite academic setting. Tool-kits offered by Illuminating the Past will walk you through planning, implementing, and sharing your own cultural imaging and preservation projects.

Visit Illuminating the Past HERE.

Helen Davies will be leading the “Seeing Beyond: Practical and Low-Cost Multispectral Imaging” workshop at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds’ Digital Medieval Studies Institute on July 11, 2025. This workshop offers an introductory discussion and hands-on demonstration of low-cost and accessible MSI systems, like MISHA.

Katie Albers-Morris and Helen Davies, along with Nike Stam and Gregory Heyworth, published an article in the recent volume of Studia Celtica Fennica. This article discusses the use of MSI to investigate the previously illegible final page of Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek MS VLQ 7.

Find the article HERE.

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The Videntes team has published an article together in a special issue of Arte Cristiana 944. In this article, the team describes the Rotolo con Atti Degli Apostoli of St. Eusebius Cathedral and how Videntes uses MSI imaging to investigate the scroll and its connections to six other scrolls in the Archivio Capitolare, Vercelli.

Find the article HERE.

Dr. Helen Davies was awarded a $250,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund the 2025 Illuminating the Past: A Summer Institute on Multispectral Imaging and Cultural Heritage Preservation. Illuminating the Past is a professional development institute to educate participants on multispectral imaging and related methods to enhance analysis of humanities collections. This institute will be held in collaboration with Videntes and UCCS’ Digital History Center.

Read the NEH and the Office of Digital Humanities announcement HERE.

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Videntes recently held the first Digital Humanities Institute in Vercelli. In collaboration with the Museum Del Tesoro e Archivio Capitolare, our team was able to lead participants in five days of workshops, lectures, and labs to introduce them to MSI processing with medieval art and archival documents.

April 2, 2024

Publication: “Multispectral Imaging to Recover the Lost Text in the Sarajevo Haggadah”

Videntes team member Katie Albers-Morris has published an article with Aleksandra Buncic and Gregory Heyworth in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, describing the process of using MSI to image the Sarajevo Haggadah. The Sarajevo Haggadah is a Spanish illuminated manuscript that followed Jews expelled from Spain in the 14th century, and the MSI project has revealed a complete text of a sale contract that had been erased.

Find the article HERE.

Vercelli Map Published in Virtual Mappa Project

The Virtual Mappa project now holds the publication of the badly-damaged thirteenth-century Vercelli Map. The first stage of the editing process has been completed. Included are an MSI image of the map (annotated), an RBG image (for comparison), and a general description of the map. Dr. Helen Davies and Dr. Heather Wacha have been working on editing and publishing the map’s content for three years and are pleased to announce that half of the mapmaker’s inscriptions have been revealed.

Each inscription contains an annotation with a diplomatic transcription, a normalized transcription, an English translation, and relevant notes. These are the inscriptions that appear in blue on the MSI map. Those in white will be complete Summer 2026.

Imagine being able to see the invisible, uncovering secrets of medieval artifacts, manuscripts, and paintings that have been hidden for centuries. This innovative technology uses different wavelengths of light to peer beneath the surface of cultural treasures, revealing fascinating details that our eyes alone can’t see. It’s like having a time machine at our fingertips, allowing us to journey back through history and witness the early versions, hidden texts, and lost artistry of creations from another time. In Videntes, we harness the power of multispectral imaging to breathe new life into historical texts. This isn’t just about looking at old objects in a new light; it’s about rewriting history with a more accurate, vibrant brush. Whether it’s unearthing a forgotten poem on the back of an ancient manuscript or discovering the original contents of a centuries-old drawing, multispectral imaging opens up a world of possibilities. It’s not just technology; it’s a gateway to the past, inviting everyone to be a detective in the grand mystery of human history. Join us as we embark on this thrilling adventure, using cutting-edge tools to uncover the stories that time almost erased!

Lately, we’ve been putting some final touches on the Vercelli map’s sources. The Vercelli map was once clearly visible to the naked eye but has sustained much damage since its creation in the 13th century. Today certain parts of the map are missing and other areas are simply no longer legible. MSI has brought back much of the original content of the map and Dr. Helen Davies and Dr. Heather Wacha have been working on completing a digital edition, including transcriptions, translations, and notes. 

Recently, we’ve been tracking down the mapmaker’s sources for certain inscriptions. One super exciting find concerns place names for an area of the map that more or less reflects modern-day Turkey. Apparently, the Vercelli mapmaker was familiar with the Latin poet Ovid and felt the need to include place names that Ovid describes on his travels into exile during the years 8-9 CE. The Vercelli mapmaker has not only put these places on the map, but has also quoted directly from Ovid’s Tristia (Book 1, chapter 10) to complete the descriptions. 

The city of Sciticon, for example:

• Ovid: inque Propontiacis haerentem Cyzicon (Sciticon) oris, Cyzicon, Haemoniae nobile gentis opus

• Vercelli: Sciticon. Hanc civitatem argonaute edificaverunt, et eam Sciticon dixerunt, unde Ovidius hinc que propontiacis herentem Sciticon horis. Sciticon hemonie nobilitatis opus

Barring the fact that the Vercelli mapmaker’s manuscript source would have had several previous iterations, each providing an opportunity to introduce misspellings and scribal error, there is no doubt that the mapmaker’s description came from a copy of Ovid’s Tristia, and no doubt that the mapmaker had a reason for including it on the map.

We’ve found several other direct quotations, not only from Ovid’s Tristia but from his other works as well. While it may be less surprising to find references to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we think these references to the Tristia are pretty special! In essence, the Vercelli map gives its readers a visual road map to Ovid’s voyage into exile. Now who would have been interested in that?

Vercelli Map Edition: https://sims2.digitalmappa.org/36

Imaging credits: Dr. Helen Davies and Katie Albers-Morris

Helen Davies collaborated on a recently published article in the Johns Hopkins University Press that seeks to clarify the varied utilities of MSI and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) for the purposes of fragment recover and analysis.

Find the article HERE.