Some Electronic Resources

The present course will not provide formal instruction in palaeography, but it will be helpful to have some guidance to the basics of the subject. For this end you are directed to the following websites and textbooks:

1. Technical Support / Online Training in Palaeography

• Éditions en ligne de l’École des chartes: http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/. Hosts many useful sites and resources, including an online text of the Le Glossarium infimae et mediae latinitatis de Du Cange, ed. L. Favre (1883–7), the comprehensive dictionary of medieval Latin which remains a crucial reference text even though the first edition was published in 1678.
• Lewis and Short Online: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059. The vast Perseus database, hosted at Tufts University, includes an online version of C. T. Lewis and C. Short (eds), A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879).
• Lexicon Abbreviaturarum: http://inkunabeln.ub.uni-koeln.de/vdibProduction/handapparat/nachs_w/cappelli/cappelli.html. An online reproduction of the 1928 German edition of Capelli’s dictionary of abbreviations.
• Medieval Research Centre at the University of Leicester: http://paleo.anglo-norman.org/. Includes training in both early-modern and medieval palaeography.
• The National Archives: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/. The In-depth Learning Guides at National Archives includes a number of useful tools for our purposes, including Latin Palaeography, an online tutorial intended to help students to learn how to read the handwriting found in documents written in Latin between 1086 and 1500, and two guides to kind of Latin used in documents between 1086 and 1733, one for Beginners and the other for the More Advanced. It is oriented, however, towards the needs of readers of diploma scripts rather than towards those of bookhands.
• Orbis Latinus Online: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/Graesse/contents.html. The essential dictionary of Latin place-names.

2. Search Engines and Overarching Databases

• British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/. Also has a useful glossary of technical terms.
• Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts: http://manuscripts.cmrs.ucla.edu/. A search engine designed to enable users to find fully digitised manuscripts on the web.
• The Digital Scriptorium: http://scriptorium.columbia.edu/. Describes itself as ’an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research.’ Using keywords in the search engine often turns up useful and extensive results, but the site offers ’samples’ of pages from its MSS, rather than full facsimiles.
• Manuscripta Medievalia, Digitalisierte Handschriften: http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/. A portal with links to collections of digitised manuscripts in various German libraries.
• Manuscriptorium: http://www.manuscriptorium.com/. Describes itself as ‘a virtual research environment providing access to all existing digital documents in the sphere of historic book resources (manuscripts, incunabula, early printed books, maps, charters and other types of documents).... The service provides seamless access to more than 5 million digital images.’
• Medieval Manuscripts in Dutch Collections: http://www.mmdc.nl/static/site/. Provides descriptions of all medieval western manuscripts up to c.1550 written in Latin script and preserved in public and semi-public collections in the Netherlands.
• Nuova Biblioteca Manoscritta: http://www.nuovabibliotecamanoscritta.it/. An online catalogue of medieval manuscripts held in the libraries of the Veneto with links to digitised examples.
• The Production and Use of English Manuscripts, 1060 to 1220: http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/em1060to1220/index.html. An e-book that aims to ‘identify, analyse and evaluate all manuscripts containing English written in England between 1060 and 1220; to produce an analytical corpus of material from late Anglo-Saxon England, through the Norman Conquest and into the high Middle Ages; to investigate key questions including the status of written English relative to French and Latin; and to raise awareness of agenda informing the production of so many texts in English during this important period’.

3. Some of the Many Websites that Provide Facsimiles of Medieval Manuscripts

• Aberdeen Bestiary: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/. A much celebrated manuscript.
• Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: http://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/. The Bavarian State Library has one of the largest collections of MSS and printed books in Germany, many of which have been digitised for its online collection.
• Belgica: http://belgica.kbr.be/fr/pres/pres_fr.html. The digital library of the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique.
• BnF archives et manuscrits: http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/. Though far from complete, the new electronic catalogue at the Bibliothèque nationale de France is powered by an excellent search engine. The library's website also houses some useful sub-sites which have been built to support exhibitions of illuminated manuscripts, including Bestiaire médiéval, Gastronomie médiévale, Idrisi: la Méditerranée au XIIe siècle, La légende du roi Arthur, Les mappemondes: Une image médiévale du monde, and, above all, Trésors carolingiens.
• La Biblioteca Ambrosiana: http://www.ambrosiana.eu/jsp/index.jsp. Various items from the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan. Codici latini provides a good starting point.
• The Burnet Psalter: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/diss/heritage/collects/bps/. A psalter made in north-eastern France or Flanders in the fifteenth century.
• Cambridge Digital Library: http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk.
• Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis (CEEC): http://www.ceec.uni-koeln.de/. Provides access to 400 or so manuscripts in the Episcopal and Cathedral Library of Cologne.
• Codices Electronici Sangallenses (CESG): http://www.cesg.unifr.ch/en/. Provides access to 144 MSS (so far) in the Library of the monastery of St Gall. For the Annals of St Gall, see Cod. Sang. 915. The holdings of other Swiss libraries can also be accessed via ’e-codices’: http://www.e-codices.ch/en/.
• Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music: http://www.diamm.ac.uk/.
• Early Manuscripts at Oxford University: http://image.ox.ac.uk/. Sometimes slow because the resolution of the images is very high, but offering tremendous detail and including MSS of a number of important manuscripts, such Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 157, the holograph of the Chronicle of John of Worcester. Cf. John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. and trs. R. R. Darlington, P. McGurk and J. Bray, 3 vols. Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1995-).
• Europeana Regia: http://www.europeanaregia.eu/en. A project that aims to digitise 874 rare and precious manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Bavarian State Library, the library of the University of Valencia, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, and in the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique.
• The Gascon Rolls Project (1317–1468): http://www.gasconrolls.org/.
• Le graduel de Bellelay: http://bellelay.enc.sorbonne.fr/. Hosted by l’École des chartes, this site provides a complete facsimile of one of the earliest sources for the liturgy of the Praemonstratensian Order. The index is particularly useful.
• Harvard University's Houghton Library: http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/collections/early_manuscripts/. Houghton’s Latin MSS date chiefly from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but there are some remarkable items in its ever expanding collection of digitized books, e.g. a 12th-century copy of the poems of Hildebert of Lavardin (MS lat 300).
• Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: http://www.hab.de/bibliothek/wdb/mssdigital.htm.
• Irish Script on Screen: http://www.isos.dias.ie/. A library of high-quality digitized images of Irish manuscripts, based at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies but from all the major Irish collections.
• Das Jenaer Martyrologium: http://ulblin01.thulb.uni-jena.de/martyr/martyrologium_flash.html. A thirteenth-century martyrology with vivid illustrations.
• Det Kongelige Bibliotek (Copenhagen): http://www.kb.dk/en/nb/materialer/haandskrifter/HA/e-mss/. The most useful items here appear under Codices Latini Haunienses and Fragmenta Latina Hauniensia.
• De Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Hague): http://www.kb.nl/manuscripts/. Images of illuminated manuscripts in the National Library of the Netherlands.
• Leiden University—Digital Special Collections: https://socrates.leidenuniv.nl/. An important collection that includes many remarkable Carolingian and high medieval manuscripts, such as Codex Vossianus Latinus Q.79, a ninth-century copy of the Latin translation of Aratus’s poem Phainomena by Claudius Germanicus. The original text—as opposed to the alternative translations which have been inserted in the margins and on blank leaves—was written in a quasi-classical script, and lavishly illustrated with images of the constellations.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org. Among its online exhibitions are some useful sites offering images from illuminated manuscripts, including Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages.
• Monumenta Germaniae Historica Digitale Bibliothek: http://www.mgh.de/bibliothek/digitale-bibliothek/. Provides access to many useful resources, including an online reproduction of the 1905 facsimile of the Dresden manuscript of the Chronicle of Theitmar of Merseburg, for which there is an excellent modern edition (Thietmar of Merseburg, Die Chronik und ihre Korveier Überarbeitung, ed. R. Holtzman, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, n.s. 9 (Berlin, 1935) [MHB69+]) and an English translation (D. A. Warner, Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg (Manchester, 2001) [MHBD]).
• Musicologie médiévale: http://www.univ-nancy2.fr/MOYENAGE/UREEF/MUSICOLOGIE/musmed.htm. A large site devoted to music manuscripts at the Université Nancy 2. It offers, among other things, a very full listing of sites with images of manuscripts with notation.
• The National Library of Scotland: http://digital.nls.uk/gallery.cfm. The library has put a number of its MSS online, including the Aberdeen Breviary (http://digital.nls.uk/aberdeen-breviary/) and the Murthly Hours, a lavishly decorated and early example of this important late medieval genre of liturgical book (http://digital.nls.uk/murthlyhours/).
• The National Library of Wales has put a some of its best manuscripts online, including the ’Book of Llandaff’ (MS 17110E) and the ’Brut y Tywysogion’ (Peniarth MS 20): http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=126.
• Parker Library on the Web: http://parkerweb.stanford.edu/parker/. Based at Stanford University, this site offers access to one of the greatest collections of medieval and especially Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the UK, that of Corpus Christi College Cambridge.
• Philadelphia Free Library Medieval Manuscripts: http://libwww.library.phila.gov/medievalman/.
• Princeton University Digital Library: http://pudl.princeton.edu. Includes a few western medieval manuscripts, two of which are to be found in the Scheide Collection. Note also the fascinating collections of Islamic and Yemeni manuscripts.
• Research Library at Olomuc: http://dig.vkol.cz/. A small library of later medieval manuscripts in digital facsimile. The apparatus is in Czech, but many of the titles are in Latin.
• St Alban’s Psalter: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/english/. An illustrated psalter which may have been made for Christina of Markyate.
• St Laurentius Digital Library: http://laurentius.ub.lu.se/. Digital images of sixty-four manuscripts in the Library of Lund University.
• The Schøyen Collection: http://www.schoyencollection.com/. One of the most significant, modern, collections of manuscripts in private ownership.
• Vatican Secret Archives: http://www.archiviosegretovaticano.va/en/archivio/.
• Virtual Monastic Library of Lorsch: http://www.bibliotheca-laureshamensis-digital.de. Hosted by the library of Heidelberg University, this site aims to ‘virtually reconstruct’ the monastic library of the important monastery at Lorsch in the Rhineland by providing online facsimiles of the 330 manuscripts that have survived—330 codices that are presently found in over 68 libraries across the worldwide.
• Yale University Beinecke Digital Library: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/. Yale University Library has made a number of its finer manuscripts available as digital resources, including Beinecke MS 416, a late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century collection of didactic diagrams from the Cistercian abbey of Kamp in western Germany. It comprises eight folios of figures which are often called the Speculum theologiae. Another notable manuscript is Yale MS 229, an illuminated collection of poems from the so-called Vulgate cycle of Arthurian romances (i.e. Le livre de Lancelot du Lac, bk iii, La queste del Saint Graal, and La mort au Roy Artus). It was written in northern France towards the end of the thirteenth century.

< Home