For Churches & Religious Archives

Centuries of parish history, now searchable with AI.

Parish registers, diocesan records, monastery manuscripts — the handwritten records of your community's spiritual and social history. Transkribus reads these documents with AI and turns them into searchable, structured data. From a single baptism register to an entire diocesan archive.

Parish Registers Diocesan Archives Monastery Records Table Extraction

Book a consultation See how it works

Used by diocesan archives, church historians, and genealogists worldwide. EU-hosted, GDPR-compliant.

200M+Pages processed to date

95%+Accuracy on trained models

100+Languages & scripts supported

EU-hostedGDPR-compliant — personal data stays in Europe

Trusted by archives that hold church records

Parish Registers

Baptism, marriage, and burial registers — AI table extraction reads the tabular layouts and turns handwritten entries into structured, searchable data.

Diocesan Archives

Visitation reports, administrative correspondence, financial records — process the institutional archives of entire dioceses at scale.

Monastery Manuscripts

Medieval and early modern monastic documents — charters, chronicles, account books. AI models for Latin, Gothic, and regional hands.

Church Council Minutes

Congregational records, synodal protocols, meeting minutes — make centuries of institutional decision-making searchable.

Cemetery & Memorial Records

Gravestone inscriptions, burial lists, memorial books — preserve the names and dates that connect families to their history.

Religious Correspondence

Clergy letters, mission reports, pastoral communications — unlock the personal voices behind institutional records.

Archion: One-click AI transcription for church records

Archion integrated the Transkribus API directly into their online viewer for historical church records. Researchers browsing digitized parish registers can trigger AI text recognition on any page with a single click — no separate tool, no file export. The transcription appears as an overlay right next to the original scan, making it easy to read centuries-old handwriting in context.

One-click AI transcription inside the document viewer

Transcription overlay alongside the original scan

Thousands of German parish registers accessible on demand

See Archion's text recognition

Archion document viewer with Transkribus text recognition — ©Archion

How to Transcribe Church Records

Step-by-step guide to digitizing baptism, marriage, and burial registers with Transkribus.

Guide

Read guide

Handwritten Tables to Spreadsheets

Convert the tabular layouts of parish registers into structured Excel data with table recognition.

Tutorial

Read tutorial

AI Models for Norwegian Church Registers

Four AI models for reading old Norwegian handwriting — including models trained on family and parish records.

Models

See models

Reading Fraktur, Kurrent & Sütterlin

The German historical scripts found in most Kirchenbücher — and the AI models that can read them.

Models

See models

Kirchenbücher

24 pages

Published Oct 2025

Switzerland

Archives de l'ancien Évêché de Bâle

Les Archives de l'ancien Évêché de Bâle (AAEB) sont une fondation conservant les fonds d’archives de l’ancienne principauté épiscopale de Bâle. Son siège est...

59K pages1500–1800FrenchFrench, Middle (ca.1400-1600)+2

Published Sep 2023

Germany

Kloster Aldersbach Digital

2.8K pages

Published Jan 2024

Austria

Hohensalzburg digital

Archiv der Erzdiözese Salzburg | Salzburger Landesarchiv

Ein Digital Humanites-Projekt der Universität Salzburg.Dazu mehr: https://hohensalzburg.digital/

708 pages1540–1700German

Published Dec 2024

Brazil

Três Forquilhas

Arquivo histórico da IECLB no EST

Livro de Atas. Comunidade Evangélica de Três Forquilhas. 1895-1928

158 pages1895–1928German

Published Sep 2025

Your parish archive here

Publish your transcribed church records as a searchable Transkribus Site — accessible to parishioners, genealogists, and researchers.

Get started

Full-service

We handle the entire project for you

Many church archives and diocesan institutions prefer to outsource digitization entirely. We work with your archivists to plan and execute the project — from scanning consultation to searchable, published collections online. Your team defines what to digitise, we deliver the result.

Scanning consultation and preparation

Custom AI model training on your archive's handwriting

Batch transcription with table extraction for registers

Published Transkribus Site with full-text search

Ongoing support and model improvements

See managed project examples

200M+ pages transcribed99.9% uptimeCooperative ownedGDPR compliantEU sovereign infra

Built on trust, hosted in Europe.

Parish registers contain deeply personal data — baptisms, marriages, burials. Your records stay on our own servers in Austria, fully GDPR-compliant. No US cloud, no Big Tech dependencies.

EU-hosted & GDPR-compliant

All data processed and stored in Austria. Full compliance with European data protection regulations. Parish register data — names, dates, family connections — never leaves Europe.

Cooperative, not corporate

READ-COOP is a European cooperative owned by 180+ member institutions — including diocesan archives and cultural heritage organisations. You can join and shape the platform.

Proven at scale

200 million pages processed. Used by national archives, state libraries, and cultural heritage institutions across Europe. Church records are among the most common document types on the platform.

Ready to preserve your parish records?

Talk to our team about digitizing your church archive. Managed projects for dioceses, self-service for parishes, organisation plans for institutions.

Book a consultation See organisation plans

200M+pages processed

95%+accuracy on trained models

EU-hostedGDPR-compliant