Medieval History Web Resources

Research Tools

Portals and Online Bibliographies

• The Labyrinth - Resources for Medieval Studies.
• International Medieval Bibliography - the most comprehensive database of articles in periodicals and edited collections. Goes back to 1967. Available to members of the university on campus: hit the 'Enter Databases' button, then 'go' alongside IMB.
• Royal Historical Society Bibliography - the essential starting point for constructing a bibliography on a topic in British history.
• The British Academy Portal - Medieval Studies.
• Medieval Source Material on the Internet - a good starting-point for regional history.
• GENUKI (UK and Ireland Genealogy) - useful links and sources (including maps) for regional history.
• The Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research hosts, among other items, three useful online bibliographies:
• Journals of Interest to Classicists - searchable catalogue of articles.

Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias

• Lewis and Short - the definitive dictionary of classical Latin.
• Graesse, Orbis Latinus - a dictionary of Latin place names.
• Oxford Reference Online - a useful database to which the university subscribes.
• Catholic Encyclopedia - the older, and sometimes more useful, 1908-14, edition online.
• Bosworth and Toller - the 'original' dictionary of Old English.

Dates and Dating Issues

• The English Calendar - an online concordance of dates developed by Ian McInnes.

Manuscript Resources

• National Archives, the organisation that now combines the Historical Manuscripts Commission and the Public Record Office as a 'single national resource for British history'.
• Note esp. the National Archives Palaeography Tutorial, an excellent starting point.
• Manuscript Sources for British History - an online edition of the old HMC guide for postgraduates.
• British Library - Illuminated MSS Catalogue.
• Early Manuscripts at Oxford University - online reproductions of key manuscripts.
• Images of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
• CNRS - Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes, the essential starting point for the study of medieval manuscripts in French libraries.
• Enluminures, the INITIALE database of the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes which allows access to nearly 20,000 images, mainly of MSS in the municipal libraries of France.
• The St Alban's Psalter - an exemplary online facsimile edition of one of the most intriguing twelfth-century manuscripts.
• Codices Electronici Sangallenses - a digital library of the medieval codices of the monastery of St Gallen in Switzerland. 400 of the 2,100 medieval manuscripts date from before AD 1000 making this a particularly important collection.
• Research Library at Olomuc, a small library of manuscripts in digital facsimile. The apparatus is in Czech, but many of the titles are in Latin.
• Irish Script on Screen, a library of high-quality digitized images of Irish manuscripts from all the major Irish collections.
• Manoscritti datati d'Italia, provides information on dated and datable Italian manuscripts - in Italian.

Texts, especially Christian Texts, Online

• CLCLT Library of Latin Texts. A comprehensive database of Classical and Medieval Latin texts chiefly derived from Corpus Christianorum. Available to members of the university on campus: hit the 'Enter Databases' button, then 'go' alongside 'Library of Latin Texts'.
• Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
• The Decrees of All the Ecumenical Councils.
• Douay-Rheims Bible Online. An immensely useful site which puts the standard English translation of the Vulgate online with handy links to the Latin original.
• Gallica - a digital archive established by the Bibliothèque Nationale.
• Monumenta Germaniae Historica - online access to digital images of the entire MGH!
• Archivio della Latinità Italiana del Medioevo - an archive of Latin texts relating to Italian history between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries.
• The Oxford Text Archive.
• Medieval Latin.
• Medieval Sources On-Line - campus network only.
• British History Online. Includes Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae.

Sites about Putting Texts and Other Resources Online

• The Digital Medievalist Project - a discussion board offering advice for medievalists working with digital media.

Websites Aligned to Precise Topics

Antiquity and Early Christianity

• Exploring Ancient World Cultures.
• The Internet Classics Archive - 441 works of classical literature,
• De Imperatoribus Romanis - an online encyclopedia of Roman Emperors.
• The Ecole Initiative: Early Church History.
• Worlds of Late Antiquity.

Monasticism

• The Cistercians in Yorkshire.

The Cult of Saints

• For a saint's shrine online, see The Shrine of St Michael at Monte Gargano. This site offers 'virtual visits' to the Archangel's grotto.
• Patron Saints Index.

The Crusades

• Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East.

Medieval England

• Anglo-Saxon Charters Homepage.
• Electronic Sawyer - a handlist of Anglo-Saxon charters now much updated.
• Fontes Anglo-Saxonici - a 'register' of written sources used by Anglo-Saxon authors.
• For Anglo-Saxon studies, there is no better set of links than that provided by Simon Keynes's Homepage.
• Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies.
• Access to Archives - a major finding-aid for charters (title deeds) and other sources deposited in England's County Record Offices.
• Taxatio - a database containing the valuation, plus related details, of the English and Welsh parish churches and prebends listed in the ecclesiastical taxation assessment of 1291-2.

Medieval Scotland

• The National Archives of Scotland.

Women's History

• Diotima: Women and Gender in the Ancient World.

Intellectual History

• Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric - a guide to medieval rhetoric.

E-Journals Relevant to Medieval History

Subscriber Access Only

The contents of many major journals may be consulted online via various electronic databases to which the library subscribes, as set out in the following (far from complete) table. These databases, which allow many students to read the same article at the same time, can be accessed from terminals across the campus. Start by visiting http://libweb.lancs.ac.uk/online.htm.

Open Access

• The Medieval Review. Formerly the Bryn Mawr Medieval Review, this site has reviews of publications in all areas of medieval studies dating back to 1993.
• Tabularia. A new electronic journal for specialists in Norman History published by the Centre de Recherches Archéologiques et Historiques Médiévales, at the Université de Caen-Basse-Normandie.

Some Relevant Organisations

• The Hagiography Society
• Ecclesiastical History Society
• Canterbury and York Society
• Monumenta Germaniae Historica
• The Haskins Society - the leading society for Norman Studies.
• The Medieval Academy of America, the publishers of Speculum.
• Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (UCLA), the publishers of Viator.
• Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
• Australian Early Medieval Association
• The Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections
• Richard III Society

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