Ongoing project to collect Latin texts written in Italy during the Middle Ages. The holdings are divided between literary (e.g. hagiography, philosophy, sermons, chronicles) and documentary (e.g. town statutes, papal bulls) works, and can be searched or browsed by period, location, author, genre, prose, or verse. Each item includes the edition from which the text was taken, and preserves original pagination.
Archives
ARTFL Project
Bibliotheca Latina: Latinitas Mediaevalis
A free digital library providing medieval Latin texts from the 7th to the 14th centuries in an alphabetical list (by author). It is part of the larger IntraText Library digital collection published by Èulogos SpA (http://www.eulogos.net), which includes, among other archives, Biblioteca Italiana and Biblioteca religiosa. Texts are harvested from other websites—not all academic–as well as print matter. Searchable across entire collection. Includes linked notes, concordances, lists, and statistics related to texts. Although BL texts are also searchable by author, title, or general period of origin, the site offers no editorial or contextual information. Published under Creative Commons.
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BnF Archive et Manuscrits
Searchable database of the manuscripts held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in the Departement des Manuscrits and the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, some with links to digitized versions of the manuscripts. Database includes full descriptions of manuscripts and bibliographical information, as well as incipit and explicit.
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British Library manuscripts
A database of manuscripts digitized by the British Library; see the website for the full range of its archival collection.
British Museum Collections Online
Searchable database of tens of thousands of images and records of objects in the British Museum collection, spanning thousands of years and from all across the world.
* National History Day Selected Resource *
CORSAIR Online Collection Catalog (The Morgan Library & Museum)
Named after Pierpont Morgan’s yacht, CORSAIR is a single database providing unified access to over 250,000 records for medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, rare and reference books, literary and historical manuscripts, music scores, ancient seals and tablets, drawings, prints, and other art objects. Records continue to be added for the balance of the collection as well as for new acquisitions.
The depth of detail is unusual for an online catalog. Many records include summaries of the content of individual letters, lengthy notes about provenance, and detailed descriptions of bindings. Specialized indexes enable researchers to find all of the Morgan’s holdings associated with a given name, date, or place. For example, with a single search a scholar interested in Dickens can find records for manuscripts and letters in the author’s hand, early printed editions of his novels, original illustrations, photographs, and personal possessions such as Dickens’ ink pot and cigar case.
CORSAIR also serves as the gateway to one of the largest repositories of medieval images on the Internet, providing access to more than 57,000 digitized images from the Morgan’s collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Users may page through every illustrated leaf within a manuscript, or search for individual images by place or date of creation, artist’s name, illustration type, and subject. The images and descriptions may be accessed directly through CORSAIR, or by visiting Images from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.
Decretum Gratiani
The Decretum Gratiani project sets as its goal the creation of an edition of Gratian’s Decretum. Though it is unclear whether the final edition will be digital or on paper, the project as of 2020 provides a PDF of a draft of the text with caveats for its use. There is also a list of manuscript sigla of the Decretum that link to outside repositories. However, many of the links in this list and elsewhere on the site are broken.
Digital Dante
Digital Vatican Library (DVL)
DigiVatLib is a digital library service. It provides free access to the Vatican Library’s digitized collections: manuscripts, incunabula, archival materials and inventories as well as graphic materials, coins and medals, printed materials (special projects).
e-codices: Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland
A collection of nearly 1,500 digitized manuscripts from Swiss libraries and collections. These manuscripts may be searched or browsed (by location, language, date, material, author, scribe, and others), including brief descriptions and annotations and bibliography where available. Libraries and collections include: St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek; Cologny, Foundation Martin Bodmer; Basel, Universitätsbibliothek; Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, and many others.
Early English Laws Online
Early English Laws Online has as its goal the publication in print and translation of all English legal codes up to Magna Carta in 1215. Currently, the project has digitized and indexed a number of legal texts from the period in Latin, Old French, and Old English. One can search by text name, abbreviation, category, or by the king under whose reign the laws were written. Likewise, one can view catalog data and links to other repositories containing manuscripts of the legal codes. A few of these manuscripts have images that can be viewed in the site’s manuscript viewer.
The project also contains a bibliography on English law, a glossary, contextual essays, and links to other related projects.
Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
MESA Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance
Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH)
A database of the volumes of the Monumenta Germaniae Historia (MGH), a collection of meticulously edited primary sources for the study of the Middle Ages with an emphasis on the German lands. The database may be searched or browsed by the department, and the volumes (published 1826-2010) may be read online or downloaded as .pdfs.
Online Medieval Sources Bibliography
Piers Plowman Electronic Archive
Published by the Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET), the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive is a collaborative, peer-reviewed, and open-source web platform for the study of the texts and manuscripts of the late Middle English poem, Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman is a poem rich in versions and variants, and the project sets as its goal the publication of digital editions of each of the over 50 manuscript witnesses to the poem. Thus far it has published eight manuscripts in addition to the a reconstructed digital edition of the archetype of the B text of the poem. Many other manuscript witnesses are in the process of being edited as of 2020.
Each manuscript’s edition displays the text and material features of the manuscript along with the images from that manuscript. Users can also compare the text of individual manuscripts to the edited version of the text, making the platform particularly useful for comparing variant readings. Users will also find teaching materials for Piers Plowman along with an extensive bibliography on textual and manuscript studies as they relate to the poem.
Though image copyrights are held by institutions, the edited editions are open for use with citation. The source code and markup for the Archive is also downloadable.
Princeton Dante Project
Rijmkroniek van Holland (366-1305)
The “Rhyme Chronicle of Holland” project presents downloadable images of all known fragments and manuscripts of the text. The Chronicle is an important document in the history of 13th-century and 14th-century Holland.
The website is presented in Dutch with English translations available for most pages.
TEAMS (Teaching Association for Medieval Studies)
TEAMS was originally founded as a committee of the Medieval Academy of America to develop new ways to support the teaching activities of its members. It was later re-organized as an independent nonprofit educational corporation whose mission continues to be the support of teaching in medieval studies at the undergraduate, secondary, and elementary school level through the provision of resources and the sharing of techniques.
Its current programs include the publication of TEAMS Teaching Texts in cooperation with Medieval Institute Publications, the maintenance of an online library of Middle English texts, and the establishment of a committee for outreach to secondary schools. It sponsors several sessions of papers at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. TEAMS also publishes a peer-reviewed electronic journal, The Once and Future Classroom: Resources for Teaching the Middle Ages in Grades K-12, and sponsors an annual teaching prize to recognize excellence in teaching medieval studies in the K-12 classroom.
European Library
Provides access to the contents of 48 European national libraries as well as a number of research libraries such as Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, including catalog entries and some full-text content. The European Library also provides the basis for the Europeana portal, which provides links to digitized books, including many early printed books.
Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
A collection of digital resources for medieval studies organized by category, including Art, Armor, Crusades, Gender, Manuscripts, and many others. The site may be browsed by category or searched, and each link is accompanied by a brief description of its contents.
* National History Day Selected Resource *
The Public Medievalist
The Public Medievalist is a volunteer, scholar-run online magazine that treats topics on the Middle Ages that may be of interest to the general public. Taking no particular political or disciplinary stance, the magazine invites articles on a wide array of topics, all of which touch upon the ways the Middle Ages resonate in our cultures today. Recently, the magazine has run special series on gender and sexuality, race, and games in the Middle Ages. All articles are peer reviewed by at least two scholars with an advanced degree. The magazine also publishes a podcast that treats topical intersections of contemporary culture and their intersections with the medieval period.
Wissensaggregator Mittelalter und Frühe Neuzeit (WIAG)
The Knowledge Aggregator for the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period is a German-language website that brings together groups of datasets about the Middle Ages. Currently, the aggregator makes freely available four datasets based on inscriptions, seals, and other prosopographic sources. Those are: the Bishops of the Holy Roman Empire, the Dioceses of the Holy Roman Empire, Canons of the Holy Roman Empire, and Priests of the Diocese of Utrecht. Datasets include a variety of data, including in some cases birth dates, death dates, and positions held by historical persons.