Resources Online Resources for Medievalists

Although by no means comprehensive, this list offers a selection of websites that are highly useful for medievalists. If you would like to contribute a link to this webpage, please contact us at "info [at] marginalia.co.uk"..

      



General Resources

The Middle English Compendium
The MEC has been designed to offer easy access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies, and a Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, as well as links to an associated network of electronic resources.
 
Early English Text Society
Includes a catalogue of all the EETS titles, including a back catalogue. No access to digitalised texts, but useful to see what texts have been published.
 
Medium Aevum
The website of the Medium Aevum Society and its associated journal. The Society exists to support and promote research into the cultures and intellectual life of the medieval world. It hosts regular conferences, provides bursaries, and offers an annual essay prize. It also has an expanding website, with useful pages on individual authors, manuscripts, medievalist societies, events and blogs.
 
Institute for Historical Research
The most useful part of the website is the British History Online page. British History Online is a digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
 
Internet Medieval Sourcebook
Associated with ORB, this site provides the single largest repository of public-domain texts from the Middle Ages anywhere. Range covers: Byzantium, Islam, Roman Church, Early Germans, Celtic World, Carolingians, 10 C Collapse, Economic Life, Crusades, Empire & Papacy, Intellectual Life, Medieval Church, Jewish Life, Social History, Sex & Gender, States & Society, Renaissance, Reformation, Exploration.
 
The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
The Labyrinth provides free, organized access to electronic resources in medieval studies through a World Wide Web server at Georgetown University. The original medieval portal site. Has been superseded by newer projects, though still provides some useful information on a variety of topics. Not especially easy to browse.
 
NetSerf
Most fun of medieval meta-sites! Includes wide range of resources, links to other sites, a glossary and news (How chickens helped fire medieval cannon, Medieval weapons of mass destruction). Includes useful links to mailing lists and Newsgroups.
 
Royal Historical Society Bibliography
The Royal Historical Society bibliography, which is hosted by the Institute of Historical Research, is an authoritative guide to what has been written about British and Irish history from the Roman period to the present day. It contains nearly 370,000 entries, including articles in journals and collective volumes, and including data from Irish History Online and from London's Past Online. You can search by author, by publication details, by subject or by period covered. The RHS Bibliography is an essential resource for the study of British and Irish history at any level. You do not need to subscribe in order to use it.
 
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
This site covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages.
 
Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship
Promotes the study of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance from the perspectives of gender studies, women's studies, and feminist studies. The society's journal is the Medieval Feminist Forum which appears twice a year
 
CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
An excellent online source for Irish history, literature, and politics. CELT describes its mission as bringing 'the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture (in Irish, Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and English) to the Internet in a rigorously scholarly project that is, at the same time, user-friendly for the widest possible range of readers and researchers – academic scholars, teachers, students, and the general public, all over the world'. The website has a searchable online database consisting of contemporary and historical texts from many areas, including literature and the other arts.
 
Douay-Rheims Online Bible
Online version of Douay-Rheims Bible, with searchable and browsable properties.
 
ARTFL Project: Multi-Lingual Bibles
This website offers access to four searchable versions of the Bible (King James English, Luther German, Louis Segond French, and Latin Vulgate).
 
British Library - Images Online
Images from manuscripts, searchable by topic or shelfmark. Images can be ordered at a price.
 
Medievalismo - Portal de Historia
Online portal for Medieval History studies, based in Spain but with material in English, French, German and Italian. Impressive range of resources and use of technology to facilitate contact and discussion between scholars of all levels. Includes links to conferences, journals, societies, affiliated scholars and the current issue of Medievalismo Digital, the Bolet.. de Noticias de Historia Medieval. Devised and run by Jorge.
 

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Websites for Specific Texts and Authors

New Chaucer Society
Aims to "provide a forum for teachers and scholars of Geoffrey Chaucer and his age". Program includes biennial international congresses of Chaucerians, publication of the annual Studies in the Age of Chaucer and a semiannual newsletter. It also supports the Annotated Chaucer Bibliography (an electronic version of which is available on-line).
 
A Glossarial DataBase of Middle English A searchable database of glossed words prepared by Prof. Larry Benson, especially relevant for Chaucer studies. See also WordHoard, an application for the close reading and scholarly analysis of deeply tagged literary texts, including a new and freely available digital version of Larry Benson's Glossarial Concordance to the Riverside Chaucer. The information is available from within the text; as you read, any word is a link that takes you in two steps to tabular information about all spellings of all grammatical forms of the relevant lemma. Several unique features for novice and experienced users. (Free downloadable application)
 
The Princeton Dante Project
Although you need to register in order to enter, the site is a useful one for Dante enthusiasts.
 
The Camelot Project
Arthurian texts, images, bibliographies and basic information on Arthuriana, from the University of Rochester.
 
The French of England: Anglo-Norman Studies at Fordham
Provides access to material centering on the French documents of England. Translations, arcane or untranslated texts and research.
 
The Anglo-Norman Online Hub
Based in the University of Wales (Aberystwyth and Swansea). Provides background information links, texts and articles. Some restricted access.
 
Decameron Web
A growing hypermedia archive of materials dedicated to Boccaccio's masterpiece. Contains biographical information, Italian and English versions of the Decameron, and much more.
 
Christina of Markyate's Psalter
The St Alban's Psalter, in English and German versions.
 
Boethius: Consolatio Philosophiae
This is a UPenn website containing a good Latin version of Boethius's text. Also contains commentary, an English translation, a concordance to the Consolatio, biographical information, a select bibliography, and more.
 
Librarius: The Canterbury Tales
Provides original text of the Canterbury Tales, hyperlinked glossary, and side-by-side translations of most of the tales.
 
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Good selection of translated texts. Especially good for downloadable versions of mystical texts, though also Augustine and other philosophers.
 
The Clementine Vulgate Project
The Clementine text of the Latin Vulgate Bible is freely viewable at this site. You can choose from several different ways of viewing it, and you can even download it to your computer. 95% of the Bible is currently available, and 85% of it has been proofread. The complete text should be completed by the end of 2004.
 
Catholic Encyclopedia
General (ie. non-Medieval) resource on Catholicism.
 
Literatuurgeschiedenis.nl
Website with resources for medieval Dutch literature, Dutch proverbs (the famous Breughel painting with European equivalents of the proverbs), Middle Dutch in 10 lessons, and a daily medieval news item. Aimed mostly at pre-University students, but still informative and definitely interesting! Nederlandse literatuur van de Middeleeuwen: de geschiedenis, de teksten, de schrijvers. Over verliefde monniken, boosaardige vossen, dappere ridders en scheldende schrijvers (en Fokke ende Sukke.)
 
Cambridge Illuminations Virtual Exhibition
Virtual exhibition of 65 highlights of illuminated manuscripts and leaves from The Cambridge Illuminations exhibition at The Fitzwilliam Museum and the University Library, Cambridge
 
Mapping Margery Kempe
A digital library of resources for studying the cultural and social matrix of The Book of Margery Kempe. Including a database of images of East Anglian parish churches, the Middle English text and related devotional writings and saints' lives; documents about daily life, politics and commerce in 15th century Lynn; maps of pilgrimage routes; a gallery of devotional images; and bibliography and guides for teaching. Located at the College of the Holy Cross and supervised by Sarah Stanbury, Associate Professor of English, and Virginia Raguin, Professor of Visual Arts.
 

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Manuscript Studies and Paleography

DScriptorium
Website which aims to collect, store and distribute digital images of Medieval Manuscripts. Still limited range, but growing. Good links to other pages
 
Digital Scriptorium
Digital Scriptorium (not to be confused with DScriptorium, above) is an image database which contains images of medieval and renaissance manuscripts.
 
British Library Manuscript Collections
Includes catalogue of holdings and links to digital images of MSS
 
Bodleian Library Medieval Manuscripts
Includes an electronic catalogue of holdings.
 
Huntington Library Catalogue
A guide to medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the Huntington Library, San Marino. Small, but useful and detailed - well indexed.
 
Scriptorium
Scriptorium is an international journal of mediaeval manuscript studies founded in 1946. It is a biannual multilingual publication that essentially deals with codicology and the bibliography relating to European mediaeval manuscripts. Includes a search engine, with which you can search for references to any manuscript in past articles in Scriptorium and the Bulletin Codicologique (a bibliography issued as part of Scriptorium), by shelfmark.
 

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Language Aids and Dictionaries

Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid
This is a translation aid provided by the University of Notre Dame. Highly useful!

Online Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary
An online Latin dictionary provided by Tufts University which includes a 'morphology' search which will find alternatives for inflected words.

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Online Bookstores

Medieval Bookshop
Bargain books on the Middle Ages and all related subjects.
 
PostScript Books
Bargain books on all subjects - not specifically academic.
 
Abe Books
"The world's largest online marketplace for books". Includes new, second-hand, rare, or out of print books; stock-searches over 12,000 independent booksellers from around the globe. Advanced search option lets you limit the searches to just one country, and provides sellers' contact information so you can contact them directly.
 
Bookfinder
Possibly even more fantastic than AbeBooks. Bookfinder allows you to search thousands of booksellers around the globe to find the cheapest price possible on any given volume. You can frequently find prices on this site that aren't included on AbeBooks!
 

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Cambridge Sites

University Library
This site includes information on facilities, opening hours, etc. and links to manuscript holdings pages and electronic resources (journals etc.).
 
Faculty of English
This site includes information on teaching timetables, faculty members and their interests, lists of current graduate students and their topics, PDF copies of the Blue and Green Books, and more. The Faculty also offers the following helpful websites:
    • Medieval Imaginations -- This is a developing online resource being created by medievalists at Cambridge that will enable scholars around the world to have access to some of the most famous manuscript images that Cambridge libraries possess.
    • English Handwriting 1500-1700: An Online Course -- Although most of the material on these pages is a bit late for medievalists, it is an incredibly useful course for those scholars who may have to wade into sixteenth-century materials.
 
CRASSH Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities
CRASSH is an interdisciplinary research centre for the University. Provides a series of seminars and lectures on interdisciplinary issues. Little medieval input so far, though.
 
Language Centre
The Language Centre provides diploma-style language courses, mostly in modern languages.
 
Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages
The MML have a quota of places open to students from other departments to attend language courses. Wide range of languages available.
 
Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic
ASNC is part of the Faculty of English, and focuses on early-medieval languages and cultures. Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural. The library is located in the English Faculty building.

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Other useful faculty and department webpages

The libraries of all these faculties and departments are open to English graduates:

 
 
 
 
 

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Websites for Other Institutions and Organisations


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