The easiest way to find the medieval and Renaissance manuscripts is via the Year Index. National Library of Australia Digital Collections: most items in this ongoing effort are related to Australian history, but the Medieval Manuscripts section includes items from the Clifford Collection and the Nan Kivelly Calligraphy Collection AustriaĪLO: Austrian Literature Online: Die digitale Bibliothek: complete digitizations of Austrian documents from the 11th century to the present. Scottish Handwriting (16th-18th centuries) (National Records of Scotland) Australia Paleography tutorial, 1500-1800 (National Archives, UK)
InScribe: Palaeography Training Materials: a free online course from the Institute of Historical Research, University of London VHMML School is an excellent online resource of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, with beautifully-illustrated introductions to Latin, Syriac, and Arabic scripts This is an older resource, but still offers much useful practice in transcription
Note that this resource is currently offline until January 4, 2021, as the result of maintenanceĮnglish Handwriting, 1500-1700: An online course (from Cambridge).
Users of this page might also be interested in these online resources for palaeography:ĭigiPal: Digital Resource and Database of Palaeography, Manuscripts and Diplomatic: a portal and blog site for a project based in the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, on digital technology and palaeography. Licensing Status of Digitized Manuscripts Repositories is a work in progress by Carin Ruff to clarify the terms under which the images of digital manuscripts may be used Palaeography
While it is incomplete, it is a useful specialist tool for tracing and reconstructing the contents of medieval British libraries Medieval Libraries of Great Britain is a digital resource based on Neil Ker’s Medieval Libraries of Great Britain and the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues. Monastic Manuscript Project is a very complete, specialized list of manuscripts relevant to the study of early monasticism, maintained by Albrecht Diem
Useful for finding resources, but note that many of these are subscription-based databases, rather than direct links to imagesĪ digital project that is of potential interest to professional users of this page is the Seymour de Ricci Bibliotheca Britannica Manuscripta Digitized Archive, a searchable database of the notes made by De Ricci towards his planned census of medieval manuscripts in British libraries Manuscripts Online: Written Culture 1000 to 1500 is an older project that allows users to search a range of online primary sources related to Britain. The Catalogue and Collections functions allow one to search for a particular script, or the products of a particular area, and link to maps and sample images of scripts Lowe’s Codices Latini Antiquiores, with updates and corrections to Lowe.
The last blog update was 2018, and the last Facebook post was in mid-May of 2019, but it remains very usefulĮarlier Latin Manuscripts is a specialist tool based on E. The Medieval Academy of America maintains a curated list of Medieval Digital Resources, including some related to manuscript digitizationsĭigitized Medieval Manuscripts is a project to present digitizations of medieval manuscripts on interactive maps. There are many ways to access the materials, including the Timeline feature Illuminated Manuscripts from Europe The World Digital Library includes many digitizations of manuscripts, medieval and otherwise. I am always happy to hear about projects I do not know about, and about broken links. I have included notes about contents, formats, and intended audiences. There are now so many that the list has become unwieldy, but I still use it, and hope it might be useful to others as well. When I began this list many years ago, there were very few manuscript sites on the web. Some cooperative projects are to be found at the relevant top level so, a consortium of American libraries will appear as the first entry under the United States, for example. Listings are alphabetical by country, then city, and then by originating institution if necessary. The list below is intended to offer quick access to various digitization projects on the web.