“England’s Immigrants 1330-1550” is a fully-searchable database containing over 64,000 names of people known to have migrated to England during the period of the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death, the Wars of the Roses and the Reformation.
The information within this database has been drawn from a variety of published and un-published records – taxation assessments, letters of denization and protection, and a variety of other licences and grants – and offers a valuable resource for anyone interested in the origins, destinations, occupations and identities of the people who chose to make England their home during this turbulent period.
La base Enluminures propose la consultation gratuite de plus de 120 000 images, sous forme de vignette et de plein écran, reproductions numériques des enluminures et éléments de décor de plus de 5 000 manuscrits médiévaux conservés dans une centaine de bibliothèques municipales françaises.
The Enluminures database offers free consultation of more than 120,000 images, in the form of a thumbnail and full-screen, digital reproductions of illuminations and decorative elements of more than 5,000 medieval manuscripts preserved in some 100 French municipal libraries.
Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: A Register of Written Sources Used by Authors in Anglo-Saxon England is intended to identify all written sources which were incorporated, quoted, translated or adapted anywhere in English or Latin texts which were written in Anglo-Saxon England (i.e. England to 1066), or by Anglo-Saxons in other countries. The material is compiled in the form of a database which analyses each Anglo-Saxon text passage by passage, sentence by sentence or, if necessary, phrase by phrase, identifying the probable source-passages used for each particular segment. The database now contains over 28,000 records analysing in detail the source-relationships of around 1143 Anglo-Saxon texts (over 500 Old English and over 600 Latin) and identifying the use of over 1000 sources and analogues. These numbers continue to grow rapidly as we add records to the database. The database shows which texts were known in Anglo-Saxon England, how well specific texts and authors were known, and in what different ways they were used. It also provides the basis for studies on the intellectual interests of Anglo-Saxon authors, and what contributions the Anglo-Saxons made to the history of ideas.
The Footprints projects is a growing database of records that aim to track the circulation of printed “Jewish books” across time and space. Though the great majority of records come from the early modern period and beyond, there are currently over 200 entries from the invention of the printing press to the end of the 16th century.
The database tracks interactions with printed books through what it calls “footprints,” which is the project’s terminology for users’ interactions with books through marginalia, ownership marks, and numerous other qualities. The project features advanced search functionality that allows a user to search by time, place, and various textual and physical properties of the printed books. There is also visualization capability to show the path of books and holdings in various repositories around the world.
Additionally, an active community of users exists on the site as well as a blog that is updated regularly.
Fragmentarium’s primary objective is to develop a digital library specialized for medieval manuscript fragment research. Although based on the many years of experience of e-codices — Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland, the Fragmentarium Digital Library has an international orientation. First and foremost it is conceived as a social platform for libraries, scholars and students to do scholarly work on fragments. It conforms to the latest standards set by digital libraries and will set new standards, especially in the area of interoperability.
The web application contains a series of tools:
- A cataloging tool that enables libraries, collectors, researchers and students to gather and describe fragments via a CMS.
- A tool for curated and social tags, facets and keywords, allowing efficient research through comparison and cross-checking.
- A tool to link and assemble fragments offers the possibility to arrange cuttings, fragments of leaves, and individual leaves in any order.
Franciscan Women: History and Culture is a project of the Franciscan Institute and Bonaventure University to gather information on women’s Franciscan orders across the globe from the 13th century to the 18th century. The website provides a free database where users can find an extensive searchable bibliography on Franciscan women. There is also an encyclopedia of Franciscan women in addition to a list of convents across the globe with years of operation and references to secondary sources that treat the person or location. As of 2020, there are hundreds of entries available. Individual entries vary in length and contents based and can be anywhere from one sentence to several paragraphs long.
The project also has a list of helpful links for the study of women’s orders.
The French of England project provides a variety of resources for the study of French in England from the Norman Invasion into the early modern period. The site seeks to unseat typical chronological and geopolitical boundaries in showing that the French of England was a long-lasting and wide-ranging phenomenon.
The project provides resources, including: bibliographies, syllabuses, audio recordings of Anglo-French texts, some translations, and editions, as well as a list of links to other sites that approach the study of the language and cultures associated with the French of England.
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: A Dictionary of the Welsh Language (GPC) is the online version of A Dictionary of the Welsh Language, the historical dictionary of Welsh similar in scope to the Oxford English Dictionary. Funded by the Welsh government, the decades-long print project was completed in 2001 and the digital version was begun in 2011 and is an ongoing project. The GPC contains entries dating back to the earliest references to Welsh and contains many entries spanning the medieval period. Entries contain grammatical information as well as a definition and dated historical sources to the words under consideration. Users may search entries in either Welsh or English.
The project is free to use and has an active web presence that updates users on the project’s status.
The Glasgow Incunabula Project seeks to provide a catalog of the over 1000 incunabula in the University of Glasgow Library’s collections. The project provides multiple access points for the early printed materials. On the website, one can find lists of incunabula by authors, printers, dates, annotators, languages, prices, and multiple other qualities.
Most incunabula’s listings contain a detailed catalog entry and sometimes an accompanying image, all housed on Flickr. The project also has a blog that was active until 2017.
“The Global Medieval Sourcebook (GMS) is an open access teaching and research tool. It offers a flexible online display for the parallel viewing of medieval texts in their original language and in new English translations, complemented by new introductory materials.
The GMS spans one thousand years (600-1600) of literary production around the world. It contains short texts of broad interdisciplinary interest in a variety of genres, almost all of which have not previously been translated into English.”
The Global Middle Ages Project, or GMAP, aims to explore the whole world of the Middle Ages, from 500 to 1500CE, by exploring peoples, places, objects, and numerous other vectors for medieval research.
The website functions as a clearinghouse for projects hosted by GMAP with links to a variety of digital humanities projects from scholars of various aspects of the Middle Ages.
Housed at Johns Hopkins University, the Glossarial Concordance to Middle English is a database of words and their locations in texts derived from the Chaucer and Gower’s poetic works. The creators hope to expand the platform to other Middle English authors in the future. Drawing primarily from Larry Benson’s Riverside Chaucer in addition to the compiled works of Gower, the database allows a user to make complex searches for terms and phrases in those authors’ works. For an entry, the Concordance presents the text’s title and the line number at which it appears.
The site also interacts with the Middle English Dictionary to allow a user to search by dictionary headword. Searching is made simpler through the use of predictive text, so that as a user begins typing, the Concordance offers possible matches in the search box. The site invites users to contact the creators if they would like to add a text. Additionally, the source code for the project is made available on GitHub.
The database Glossarium Græco-Arabicum makes available the files of a lexical project, intended to open up the lexicon of the mediæval Arabic translations from the Greek. It contains images of the filecards (ca. 80,000) which have not yet been published in the analytical reference dictionary A Greek and Arabic Lexicon (Leiden: Brill, 1992ff.), and comprises Arabic roots from the letter jîm to the end of the Arabic alphabet.
From the eighth to the tenth century A. D., Greek scientific and philosophical works were translated wholesale into Arabic. This activity resulted in the incorporation and reorganization of the classical heritage in the new civilization which, using Arabic, spread with Islam.
The object of project Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum is to make readily available to scholars the direct information which the Graeco-Arabic translations contain for several areas of research. These include:
– the vocabulary and syntax of Classical and Middle Arabic;
– the development of a scientific and technical vocabulary in Arabic;
– the vocabulary of Classical and Middle Greek;
– the chronology and nature of the translation movement into Arabic; and
– the establishment of the texts of Greek works and their Arabic translations.
The Gregorian Archive is primarily a collection of recorded solo performances of the nearly six hundred Gregorian melodies provided in the earliest manuscript sources for the chanted Propers of the Roman Mass.
Recent edition and discussion of the work of Guto’r Glyn, with plenty of material including detailed textual notes.
This is a freely available online bilingual (Welsh and English) standard critical edition of the poetry of Guto’r Glyn (c.1435-c.1490). Guto’r Glyn is regarded as one of the most accomplished poets of late medieval Wales. As well as providing the user with translations of the poetry and paraphrases into modern Welsh, there are copious notes on the poems, the patrons, their homes, on the historical background and any notable linguistic features. Each poem is also accompanied by images from the most important manuscript witnesses (provided by the National Library of Wales), as well as transcriptions.
Handschriftencensus is a German-language web platform published by a team at the University of Marburg. The site functions as a directory for medieval German-language manuscripts from 750CE to 1520CE in libraries around the globe. The platform itself does not contain images, but does contain detailed catalog entries for each manuscript in addition to links to available images and the host repository’s catalog entry for a manuscipt. Users can see the nearly 900 manuscripts on the site in list format, ordered by repository, author/work, and illustration type.
The project has an active social media presence on Twitter and is continuously updated, with new additions made weekly. Users can also find a regularly updated, in-depth bibliography of secondary sources on German-language medieval texts and manuscripts. Copyrights for manuscript images obtained through the site are still retained by a manuscript’s holding institution.
The Historical Atlas of the Low Countries includes GIS datasets that represent various areas of the low countries including Brabant, Holland, Zeeland, Hainaut, Artois and others. The sets are made freely available for download and use under a Creative Commons license.
The Icelandic Saga Map project presents some thirty sagas from medieval Iceland with geotagged locations and images. The project aims to showcase the use landscape and eventually manuscript images alongside the places they represent.
The project presents a geo-tagged map and is free to use.
The Internet Medieval Sourcebook is useful primarily as a source for short extracts, derived from public domain sources or copy-permitted translations, to be used for teaching (particularly for medieval survey courses). Also included are some complete documents, notably saints’ lives, or links to the full documents. The editor states that the early aim was to include a wide range of texts which address elite governmental, legal, religious and economic concerns. The resources now also include a large selection of texts on women’s and gender history, Islamic and Byzantine history, Jewish history, and social history. The texts, again according to the editor’s own statement, vary in quality, and do not always represent the best or most modern translation.
* National History Day Selected Resource *
Welcome to Irish Sagas Online, a website which aims to make available reliable versions of the original texts of medieval Irish sagas with parallel translations into Modern Irish and English.
* National History Day Selected Resource *
The object of ISOS is to create digital images of Irish manuscripts, and to make these images – together with relevant commentary – accessible on a WWW site. The purpose of such a site is to provide an electronic resource which will:
- provide exposure on the internet for a vital part of Ireland’s cultural heritage.
- place these primary materials at the disposal of scholars and students.
- contribute to the conservation of these valuable books and documents by creating images of high-resolution detail which, generally speaking, will reduce the need to handle the artefacts themselves.
From the website:
The Italian Paleography website presents 102 Italian documents and manuscripts written between 1300 and 1700, with tools for deciphering them and learning about their social, cultural, and institutional settings. The site includes: digitized images of 102 manuscripts and documents; T-Pen, a digital tool to actively transcribe manuscripts and documents;
transcriptions and background essays for each item; a selection of calligraphy books and historical manuscript maps; a handbook of Italian vernacular scripts; additional resources, including a glossary, list of abbreviations and symbols, dictionaries, and teaching materials.
