Palaeography training resources
Bibliographies for the workshop are available by clicking on this link: Palaeography Training
The following pages are recommended for practice in advance of the training, especially the palaeography training online course provided by the National Archives:
The following links lead to some collections of digitally available medieval manuscripts which may be used for personal research as well as transcription practice:
Digital images/projects
The British Library Turning the Pages Project http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html
The Electronic Beowulf Project http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBeowulf/main.htm
The Digital Medievalist Project http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php/Main_Page
The Canterbury Tales Project
Irish Script on Screen – Trinity College Dublin http://www.isos.dias.ie/english/index.html
Bodleian Library http://image.ox.ac.uk/
National Library of Scotland http://www.nls.uk/digitallibrary/index.html
Cambridge University http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/digital_image_collections/
Digital Library of Wales http://www.llgc.org.uk/drych/index_s.htm
St Laurentius Digital Manuscript Library http://laurentius.lub.lu.se/
Digital Scriptorium http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Scriptorium/
Pierpoint Morgan University Library http://corsair.morganlibrary.org/
Medieval Writing (with Palaeography exercises) http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/writing.htm
Notre Dame University ttp://www.library.nd.edu/medieval_library/digital_projects.shtml
The Aberdeen Bestiary http://www.clues.abdn.ac.uk:8080/besttest/firstpag.html
The Age of King Charles V (1338-1380): 1,000 Illuminations from the Department of Manuscripts, The Bibliothèque Nationale de France http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/aaccueil.htm
Other relevant links
Online manuscript catalogues
- National Union Catalogue of Manuscripts Collections (NUCMC) - the Library of Congress launched this site for searching medieval manuscripts in many American collections
- Manuscript Catalogue , British Library, London - a very important instrument for fast searching of texts in many thousands manuscripts, also from more recent centuries
- St. John's College, Cambridge - a searchable version of M.R. James' fine catalogue, with additional notes and also images
- Manuscripta Mediaevalia , Marburg - a site for very detailed manuscript research in German collections; apart from the searchable database you can check digitized images of some 180 printed catalogues
- MANUS - a database for searching medieval manuscripts in Italian libraries
- Codex - Inventario dei manoscritti medievali della Toscana - a database with now some 2000 manuscripts in Tuscany
- Hill Monastic Manuscripts Library (HMML), Collegeville , Minn. - this site enables searching for some ninety thousand manuscripts in Austrian and Spanish libraries
- Porbase - temporarily unavailable, an online database for medieval manuscripts in Portuguese libraries
- Manuscript catalogue, Universität Graz - one of the first online manuscripts catalogue, showing also digitized images
- TABULAE-Datenbank , Vienna - a database for the Codices 1-15500 of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
- Beinecke Library , Yale University , New Haven , Conn. - not only for manuscripts, but also for other collections
- National Library of Scotland , Edinburgh - both an online catalogue for searching manuscripts and an overview with downloadable catalogues in PDF-format
- University Library, Glasgow - searching both for manuscripts and the special collections
- Manuscripts at Munich and Augsburg - this commercial website enables access to some electronic manuscript catalogues, among them the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München (Clm and Cgm series)
- Pierpont Morgan Library , New York - the catalogue of a library with more than thousand beautiful manuscripts; as an additional service one can search and admire some five thousand images included in the famous Index of Christian Art
- Det Kongelige Bibliotek , Kopenhagen - online versions of several manuscript catalogues
Apart from catalogues for one or more libraries there are important repertoria for particular kinds of manuscripts:
- Bibliotheca Neerlandica Manuscripta - an online database at Leiden University , containing information about more than twenty thousand manuscripts with texts in Middle Dutch, based on the updated notices of Willem de Vreese
- Repertorium der kanonistischen Handschriften , Leipzig - a repertory started by Gero Dolezalek for medieval manuscripts with canon law texts, see also the page on medieval canon law
- Chant behind the dikes - the site of Ike de Loos (Utrecht-Tilburg) on medieval liturgical manuscripts from the Netherlands
- Musica devota - the website of Ulrike Hascher-Burger ( Amsterdam ) on the musical manuscripts of the Devotio Moderna
- Medieval logical manuscripts , Leiden - a project of L.M. de Rijk and E.P. Bos
- JORDANUS, medieval mathematical manuscripts , Munich - a database with many thousand manuscripts, maintained by Menso Folkerts, also on a server of the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte , Berlin
- Irish Script on Screen (ISOS), Dublin - a project of several libraries concerning manuscripts with medieval Irish texts
- PhiloBiblon , Berkeley - a searchable database for manuscripts with texts from Galicia , Catalonia , Portugal and Spain
Miniatures
One should mention in particular a number of French sites for searching illuminations in medieval manuscripts:
- Mandragore, base iconographique - searching the illuminated manuscripts of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
- Liber Floridus - a search site for the illuminated manuscript at two Parisian libraries, the Mazarine and Sainte-Geneviève
- Enluminures - this site offers access to illuminated manuscripts in the major French municipal libraries
- Le Moyen Âge en lumière - images from illuminated manuscripts in France selected around several themes
And of course one can find elsewhere in Europe and America web sites with illuminated manuscripts:
One should mention also individual manuscripts. Either the illumination or the texts can be the reason for digitalisation:
- The Utrecht Psalter - the famous Carolingian manuscript, since 1732 at Utrecht University Library [ms. 32]
- The "Dyksche handschrift" - this manuscript with the Middle Dutch animal epic "Van den vos Reynaerde" (Renard the Fox) and "Der naturen bloeme" [The flower of nature] by Jacob van Maerlant had been inaccessible for many decades [Universiteitsbibliothek Münster, N.R. 381]
- Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry - the most famous medieval Book of Hours [ Chantilly , Musée Condé, ms. 65]
- Bordesholmer Marienklage - a fifteenth century musical manuscript [Universitätsbibliothek Kiel, ms. Bordesholm 23]
- Codex Manesse - the marvellously illustrated medieval songbook [Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal Germ. 848]
- The Babylonian Talmud - the only surviving almost complete medieval manuscript [ Munich , Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 95]
- Medieval manuscripts of the socalled Rhenish mystics - digitized manuscripts at Strasbourg University Library, with texts by Eckhart, Tauler and Seuse, but this site functions awkwardly; see also my Eckhart page
- Manuscripta Mediaevalia - Manuscripts Online - a quick route for viewing digitized images of a wide variety of medieval manuscripts at Darmstadt , Heidelberg , Marburg and Fulda
- Sagnanet - medieval manuscripts and old prints with the medieval Icelandic sagas, an initiative of the National and University Library , Reykjavik , and Cornell University
- Det Kongelige Bibliotek , Kopenhagen - a fine collection of digitized medieval and later manuscripts
More links
- Palaeography, codicology, manuscripts - the uncommented but very handy list by Bob Peckham of links for palaeography, manuscripts, journals about medieval manuscripts and other link collection
- Manuscripta Mediaevalia: Links , Marburg - a useful link collection at the site of the well known German database
- Latin manuscript books before 1600 - an online version at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica , Munich , of Paul Oskar Kristeller's survey of manuscript catalogues (third edition, 1993)
- Institut des Recherches sur l'Histoire des Textes (IRHT), Paris-Orleans - the international centre for manuscript research and text editions with several databases on manuscripts
- Vocabulaire codicologique - a multilingual version of the book by Denis Muzerelle (IRHT) from 1985; French, English, Italian and Spanish, but no German, and for Dutch only terms on bookbinding
- Links für Handschriftenbearbeiter - this Vienna link collection presents links for many aspects of manuscript research
- Virtuelle Bibliothek-Geschichtliche Hilfswissenschaften: Handschriften und Bibliotheken - a good link collection with comments, edited at the University of Munich; see also their web page for codicology
- Mittelalterliche Handschriften - another useful links collection at the well known Erlanger Historikerseite
- Manuscrits enluminés - a fine annotated list of websites with medieval miniatures at the French portal for medieval studies Ménestrel; one should visit also their similar pages on individual manuscripts and texts, on major digitization initiatives and digitized collections
- Handschriftenlinks , Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
- Zeroland manuscripts links - there are some not often mentioned items in this New Zealand link collection
- Textmanuscripts - a well organized links database at the website of the antiquarian booksellers Les Enluminures, Chicago and Paris
With grateful thanks to Dr Otto Vervaart for allowing us to reproduce his links from his website http://home.hetnet.nl/~otto.vervaart/manuscripts_me_eng.htm