Medieval & Renaissance Studies: Selected Websites

News, scholarship & fun!

The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) lists over 460,000 items published between 1473 and 1800 – mainly, but not exclusively in English – published mainly in the British Isles and North America – from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries. Full text of books is available through EEBO (see book section in this guide).

Links, by subject, to over 2000 medieval web sites

The database contains all information that can be assembled about every individual involved in actions in Scotland or relating to Scotland in documents written between the death of Malcolm III on 13 November 1093 and Robert I’s parliament at Cambuskenneth on 6 November 1314.

The online protection and attorney database currently holds 25,495 records. These are taken from the treaty rolls, gascon rolls and scottish rolls housed in The National Archives (TNA), for the years 1369 - 1453. This database should be used with care, as unlike the muster roll database a protection or attorney only indicates an intention to serve, rather than actual service.

A freely available resource, this site features eight units, each of which explores a different theme in Italian Renaissance art. Researchers and students can explore thematic essays, more than 300 images, 300 glossary items and 42 primary source texts. An invaluable tool for use in the classroom, educators can integrate printable activity guides and discussion questions related to each unit into their course work. This resource is a collaboration between the National Gallery of Art, Washington and Grove Art Online, made possible by the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

APIS is a collections-based repository hosting information about and images of papyrological materials (e.g. papyri, ostraca, wood tablets, etc) located in collections around the world. It contains physical descriptions and bibliographic information about the papyri and other written materials, as well as digital images and English translations of many of these texts. When possible, links are also provided to the original language texts (e.g. through the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri).

The Book of Kells contains the four Gospels in Latin based on the Vulgate text which St Jerome completed in 384AD, intermixed with readings from the earlier Old Latin translation. The Gospel texts are prefaced by other texts, including "canon tables", or concordances of Gospel passages common to two or more of the evangelists; summaries of the gospel narratives (Breves causae); and prefaces characterizing the evangelists (Argumenta). The book is written on vellum (prepared calfskin) in a bold and expert version of the script known as "insular majuscule". It contains 340 folios, now measuring approximately 330 x 255 mm; they were severely trimmed, and their edges gilded, in the course of rebinding in the 19th century.

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. Its heavily corrected text is of outstanding importance for the history of the Bible and the manuscript – the oldest substantial book to survive Antiquity – is of supreme importance for the history of the book.

Use this website to view digitised copies of manuscripts and archives in the British Library’s collections, with descriptions of their contents.

Domesday Book is a detailed survey of the land held by William the Conqueror and his people - the earliest surviving public record and a hugely important historical resource.

The 'Hengwrt Chaucer' is undoubtedly one of the greatest treasures of the National Library of Wales and one of the best known outside Wales. It is one of the most important texts of Geoffrey Chaucer's work to come down to us, and its importance has recently been magnified by the identification of its scribe as Adam Pinkhurst, one of Chaucer’s London-based associates. The manuscript may have been written at the end of the fourteenth century.

These were the books that once belonged exclusively to emperors and kings. Now 34 of the most significant manuscripts from the collections of Carolingian Emperors, the Aragonese kings of Naples and French King Charles V and his family are on display in our virtual exhibition: Manuscripts and Princes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

This unprecedented collection offers an insight into European cultural activity during three distinct historical periods and unites collections that are scattered among several European libraries.

A joint project of the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The creation of this resource and the digitization of manuscripts from the BnF was made possible by generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the Roman de la Rose Digital Library is to create an online library of all manuscripts containing the 13th-century poem Roman de la Rose.

Digitized manuscripts & printed books from one of the world's greatest libraries.

Originally compiled on the orders of King Alfred the Great, approximately A.D. 890, and subsequently maintained and added to by generations of anonymous scribes until the middle of the 12th Century. The original language is Anglo-Saxon (Old English), but later entries are essentially Middle English in tone. Translation by Rev. James Ingram (London, 1823), with additional readings from the translation of Dr. J.A. Giles (London, 1847).

CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts is Ireland's longest running Humanities Computing project. It brings the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture to you on the Internet, for the use and benefit of everyone worldwide. It has a searchable online textbase consisting of 13.2 million words, in nearly 1100 contemporary and historical documents from many areas, including literature and the other arts.

Classics site maintained by the Library of Congress.

This site provides materials for Harvard University's Chaucer classes in the Core Program, the English Department, and the Division of Continuing Education. (Others of course are welcome to use it.) It provides a wide range of glossed Middle English texts and translations of analogues relevant to Chaucer's works, as well as selections from relevant works by earlier and later writers, critical articles from a variety of perspectives, graphics , and general information ...

"This site contains samples of Greek and Latin prose and poetry texts, read by various scholars and in different styles. It is designed to help students of the classical languages to acquaint themselves with the sound of Greek and Latin and to practice their own reading skills."

Site sponsored by Fordham University. Includes the full-text various medieval documents ranging from literature to philosophy to church history.

Medieval Studies links organized by subject & sponsored by Georgetown University.

Biographical information, bibliographical information, and essays and articles about English writers.

"Perseus is a continually growing digital library of resources for studying the ancient world. The library's materials include ancient texts and translations, philological tools, maps, extensively illustrated art catalogs, and secondary essays on topics like vase painting. A collaborative team from a number of academic institutions has worked together to amass Perseus materials." Sponsored by the Classics Department of Tufts University, MA.

"The long-range goal of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive is the creation of a multi-level, hyper-textually linked electronic archive of the textual tradition of all three versions of the fourteenth-century allegorical dream vision Piers Plowman. "

Here you will find an introduction and online texts of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The site also has essays and articles, as well as links to study resources and a list of books helpful for further study.

The site includes approximately 400 images from publicity photographs featuring regional production companies --Cleveland's Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada and others; New York stage productions; motion pictures; and televised productions including several highly praised series (The Shakespeare Plays, Hallmark Hall of Fame, etc.). Notable actors and artists include: Judith Anderson, Peggy Ashcroft, Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Katherine Cornell, Mauri

Welcome to the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.

The Dartmouth Dante Project (DDP) is a searchable full-text database containing more than seventy commentaries on Dante's Divine Comedy - the Commedia.

Biographical information, bibliographical information, and essays and articles about English writers.

THIS EXHIBITION presents Renaissance editions of Dante's Divine Comedy from the John A. Zahm, C.S.C., Dante Collection at the University of Notre Dame, together with selected treasures from The Newberry Library. The Zahm collection ranks among the top Dante collections in North America. Purchased for the most part by Zahm in 1902 from the Italian Dantophile Giulio Acquaticci, the 15th- and 16th- century imprints presented here form the heart of Zahm's collection, which totals nearly 3,000 volume

"This edition of the complete works offers both original and modernized spelling and punctuation, and provides textual variants and, in some cases, scholarly notes." A part of the Perseus Project.

The Shakespeare Quartos Archive is a digital collection of pre-1642 editions of William Shakespeare's plays. A cross-Atlantic collaboration has also produced an interactive interface for the detailed study of these geographically distant quartos, with full functionality for all thirty-two quarto copies of Hamlet held by participating institutions.

What people read in England, based on over 30,000 journal, letter, and book entries.

The world’s biggest free digital archive of English traditional folk music and dance tunes.

" I write about early printed books, book history, and the digital technologies that can help us learn about books and reading. "

Online home of John Foxe’s Protestant martyrology.

A listing of all licensed books printed in England between 1554 - 1640.

Digital archive of almost 8,000 English broadsides from the 15th - 17th centuries.

Weekly posts by the British Library about the British Library's Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts Section.