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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).

Diplomata Belgica

Diplomata Belgica offers a critical survey of all the diplomatic sources, edited or still unpublished, and issued by both natural persons and legal bodies from the medieval Southern Low Countries. Diplomata Belgica covers present day Belgium as well as those areas which belonged historically to the Southern Low Countries but are part now of France (French Flanders, French Hainault), the Netherlands (parts of the provinces of Zeeland, Noord-Brabant, Limburg), the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, or Germany (parts of the Rhineland). At this stage,Diplomata Belgica contains metadata about almost 35,000 charters and deeds in Latin, Old-French, Middle Dutch and Middle High German, almost 19,000 full text transcriptions and almost 5,000 photographs of original charters. The database aims at exhaustivity for the period before 1250 and will, in the future, also include late medieval diplomatic materials without striving after completeness.

Documentary Archaeology of Late Medieval Europe (DALME)

The Documentary Archaeology of Late Medieval Europe provides access to over 500 records, primarily household inventories, that are pertinent to the study of material culture in later medieval Europe. Records typically incorporate original images, facing-page transcriptions with TEI markup, record descriptions, and metadata. New records are added on a regular basis. The site also publishes brief essays that feature inventories and objects in the collection.

The project actively seeks contributors.

Dumbarton Oaks

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection is the legacy of Robert and Mildred Woods Bliss to Harvard University and to the humanities. The multiple aspects of the Blisses’ gift include historic gardens and buildings, world-class collections for researchers and the public to enjoy, and generous support for fellowships and scholarly endeavors on the local, national, and international levels.

Our mission is, first, to maintain what we have been entrusted by the Blisses to preserve. Second, to support the pursuit of the humanities as a whole, with particular focus on the disciplines of Byzantine, Pre-Columbian, and Garden and Landscape Studies. Third, to honor the intention of the donors by achieving the greatest mutual advantage between Harvard and Dumbarton Oaks. Fourth, to serve the larger public through the museum, garden, and Friends of Music.

Durham Priory Library Recreated

From the creators: The purpose of the project is to collect all information relating to the books of Durham Priory, manuscript and printed work inherited, given, bought or created by the monks of the Benedictine priory of Durham, its predecessors and cells.

As of 2020, the project has made available catalog descriptions and IIIF-compliant images of over 150 of the manuscripts associated with Durham Cathedral. Currently items are not searchable but are arranged by shelfmark. The project is regularly updated as has an active blog associated with it.

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.

Electronic Beowulf

The fourth edition of Electronic Beowulf 4.0 is a free, online version of Electronic Beowulf that supersedes all previous editions. The online edition is designed to meet the needs of general readers, who require a full, line by line, translation; of students, who want to understand the grammar and the meter and still have time in a semester to study and appreciate other important aspects of the poem; and of scholars, who want immediate access to a critical apparatus identifying the nearly 2000 eighteenth-century restorations, editorial emendations, and manuscript-based conjectural restorations.

Enluminures

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.

Europeana Regia

A project that brings together three collections of royal manuscripts –  Carolingian manuscripts, the library of Charles V and family, and the library of the Aragonese kings of Naples – currently housed across Europe at five member libraries. Provides short essays as well as the virtual exhibition “Manuscripts and Princes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.”

Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

Searchable bibliography/index of articles in over 500 journals, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the middle ages published from c.1990 onwards. Excludes books by a single author (e.g., monographs). Many items include  brief annotations. Some images also indexed. Provides links to other resources on medieval women and gender (including masculinity and homosexuality).

 

Fragmentarium: Digital Research Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments

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.

Gallica (BnF)

Gallica is the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and makes available nearly thousands of manuscripts, printed books, and images that may be searched or browsed online, some of which are available for download as .pdf or .jpg.

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Glasgow Incunabula Project

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.

Global Middle Ages Project

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.

Handschriftencensus

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.

Hebrew Fragments in Austria

A joint venture between the Austrian National Library, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Institute for Jewish History in Austria, the Hebrew Fragments in Austria project provides images of Hebrew language fragments in Austrian manuscripts. The website functions in both English and German. There are over 500 images of fragments from over twenty repositories present in the database currently. Many of the fragments in the collection are contained in the bindings of other manuscripts and early printed books. Images are presented in JPG format and include catalog information. The projects also presents a list of the fragments arranged by text and manuscript.

The website for the project also includes a bibliography on the study of fragments generally and the study of fragments in Germanic countries specifically. Likewise, the website also presents a map of institutions in Austria holding fragments.

Icelandic Saga Map

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.

Initiale

A French-language, searchable catalog of manuscript illuminations found in manuscripts in French public libraries, excluding the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The catalog may be searched by corpus, manuscript, decoration, or bibliography, and results include the manuscript citation, brief description, date, title, and images of the illumination.

International Center of Medieval Art

Website of the International Center of Medieval Arts, which promotes the study and understanding of visual arts produced in Europe, the Mediterranean, and Slavic world from c. 300 to c. 1500.  Includes image database (on Flickr), census of dissertations (1982 onwards), the Limestone Sculpture Provenance database, list of grad programs in medieval art history, and membership information on lectures, grants, employment opportunities, and other medieval news.  Access to Gesta (their journal) and current newsletters restricted to members.

* National History Day Selected Resource *

Irish Script on Screen

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.

Italian Paleography

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.

Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project

Cloth and clothing have been integral to life for every person since civilization began.

In the Middle Ages dress was an identifier of occupation, status, gender and ethnicity; textiles ranged through opulent, symbolic, utilitarian and recycled. Cloth production and international trade constituted a major sector of the economy of medieval Britain.

Evidence for medieval textiles and clothing is sought in diverse academic disciplines: archaeology, archaeological textiles, art history, economic history, literature, languages.

The vocabulary of the various languages spoken and written in the British Isles is documented in different specialist dictionaries, yet geographical proximity and interaction through labour and trade would argue that this evidence should be categorised and analysed together.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council made an award of £765,576 within the Research Grants (Standard) Scheme to fund a 5-year Project to undertake a trans-disciplinary study with the purpose of  producing an analytical corpus of medieval dress and textiles terminology of the British Isles in the form of a searchable database, innovatively illustrated.

At its centre was the assembly and examination of textiles/clothing lexis in the early languages of Britain (Old and Middle English; Welsh, Old Irish and minor Celtic languages; Anglo-Norman/French, Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norse), investigating the genesis and subsequent development of the vocabulary.

The terms and their citations from both documentary and literary texts have been analysed in awareness of surviving textiles/dress accessories and graphic images in medieval art.

From the reviewer:

This website represents an ambitious project – “lexis” being the total stock of words in a language – in this case we are looking at words specific to the British Isles. The sections that focus on words are the best – the Dictionaries tab and the Search the Database are useful and provide data. The Gallery tab provides detailed photographs. The Research tab leads to interesting books – they are mostly dated from 2006 -2012, however.