The Significance of Modern Digital Methods for the Study of Jesuit Missions in China

Résumé

This article addresses the application of modern digital tools in research on the Jesuit missionary heritage in China, using the project of a critical edition of Historia Sinarum Imperii (HSE) by Tomasz Szpot Dunin, SJ, as a case study. Drawing on the theoretical assumptions of digital humanities – understood not as a separate discipline but as a research strategy – the author analyzes the complete “digital workflow” employed in the project: from digitization and HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) transcription, through text structuring and critical editing in the Classical Text Editor (CTE) environment, to advanced corpus analysis and the experimental use of large language models (LLMs) and RAG technology.

The aim of the article is to demonstrate that the integration of technology into the research process does not replace the scholar but rather expands researchers’ cognitive capacities, enabling efficient interpretation of sources of considerable scale and complexity. In this context, the new possibilities available to researchers of archival texts using digital humanities methods are as significant as the careful selection of tools and technologies appropriate to the established research objectives.