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Rulers of Venice is only one of several databases that draw from the Venetian state archives.
The database Cives contains all the privileges of Venetian citizenship found in the archival sources through the year 1500. The research program was begun in Reinhold Mueller’s course on medieval social and economic history at the University of Ca’ Foscari in Venice in 1986, with a grant from IBM to stimulate what is now called the “digital humanities” but which was then called “informatica umanistica,” or humanities computing. Students in several of his annual seminars transcribed citizenship records from a variety of sources. With the support of the National Research Group at Bologna and the Hedgelawn Foundation, the original database has been transformed into one with on-line search capabilities. Users are also encouraged to consult the volume Immigrazione e cittadinanza nella Venezia medievale, a cura di Reinhold C. Mueller, Venezia: Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Venezie, Studi, 1; Roma: Viella, 2010.
A second database also emerged from Mueller’s course on economic and social history: the Estimo of 1379. The Estimo was a property survey in late medieval Venice; the document contains a list of about 2100 heads of households (1100 nobles and 1000 non-nobles) plus about 42 institutions, including parishes, hospitals and monasteries. Next to each entry is a figure reflecting the declared value of the property. The database is cross-referenced with the Cives database, so it is possible to link from records in the Estimo to corresponding citizenship records.
Rulers of Venice also has a Florentine equivalent: the Tratte. This database gives access to approximately 165,000 records with information about office-holders in the Florentine republic between 1282-1532. This project is now hosted together with the online edition of the Florentine Catasto, a searchable edition of tax assessment data for Florence from 1427-1429. Users interested in more information about this source are encouraged to consult David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.