The census forms part of the collaborative project Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy, c. 1350-c.1650, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (January 2017-December 2019). The project also includes an online digital library, overseen by Dr. Guyda Armstrong and Julianne Simpson, that encompasses full digitizations of approximately 100 works housed in the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester and fourteen further digital editions from the Special Collections of the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame.
The database is devised as a census of exegetical works related to Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta and Triumphi. The top-level record type in the database lists all metadata relevant to either a specific work or a manuscript (in several cases more than one exegetical work is found in a single manuscript or print). This metadata includes information such as Creator (usually both Petrarch and the exegete when know), Short Title, Copy Seen, Date, Place, Copyist, Editor, Printer, Dedicatee, Mode of Exegesis, Related to Petrarch’s (i.e. the related work/composition(s) of Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta or Triumphi or both), Visual Elements, Physical Description, Internal Description. Most entries include Notes, Bibliography and indication of any available digitized editions and relevant online references.