FRH TALKS | Exploring the Baptisteria Sacra Index: A Digital Gateway to Religious Heritage
The session will focus on a particular example: the Baptisteria Sacra Index: An Iconographical Index of Baptismal Fonts (BSI), a pioneering in-progress digital humanities project at the University of Toronto, hosted by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada which was launched this year.
BSI documents baptismal fonts from the early Christian period to the seventeenth century from across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and countries in Central and North America (ninety-six countries) providing extensive data, inscriptions, images of fonts and settings, geographical and historical information. Making this information openly accessible online, the Baptisteria Sacra Index enhances scholarly research, safeguards little-known community works for long-term preservation, and brings this cultural heritage to audiences worldwide.
Our guest speaker, Harriet Sonne de Torrens, who is the founder of BSI and co-director with Miguel A. Torrens, will offer us a glimpse into the making and launching of this extensive online database, and explain in more detail its functioning, its relevance in the field of digital humanities, and how the study of these cultural vessels serve as venerated objects and living witnesses to the past within communities’ cultural history. Scholarship: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0840-9877
The event will take place on Tuesday, 14 October 2025 from 17:00 to 18:00 CET. Join us for this fascinating exploration of digital humanities’ role in religious heritage preservation!
Register here: https://forms.monday.com/forms/f44ed8f3d42d5034d5187382920074f9?r=use1
