2. Accessing Medieval Manuscripts
B) Catalogues of Medieval Manuscripts in the UK Libraries
& Beyond
UK
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
♦ Aberdeen, University of Aberdeen
A Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in the University Library, Aberdeen, Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932)
♦ Aberystwyth, The National Library of Wales
Its collection-level descriptions do not provide their contents. There is a pilot version of Catalogues and Finding Aids for Archives and Manuscripts, which is currently, only available internally. J. Gwenogvryn Evans has produced Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language (London:HMSO, 1898-1910).
The Digital Mirror provides the full images of medieval manuscripts including The Hengwrt Chaucer, Piers Plowman (NLW MS 733B), A Middle English Miscellany (BROGYNTYN MS ii.1), Medieval Astronomy (NLW MS 735C) and several medieval Welsh manuscripts.
The library also holds other Chaucerian manuscripts: leaves of the 'Merthyr Fragment' (NLW MS 21972D), containing part of the 'Nun's Priest's Tale'; exemplars of Tretyse on the Astrolabe (Peniarth 359, NLW 3049D and NLW 3567B); a fifteenth-century copy of Chaucer's English translation of Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy (Peniarth MS 393D).
♦ Cambridge, Cambridge University Library
Published Catalogues:
- Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 737-1600 in Cambridge Libraries, Pamela Robinson, 2 vols (Cambridge: Brewer, 1988)
- Illuminating the Law: Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge Collections, Susan L'Engle and Robert Gibbs (London: Harvey Miller, c2001)
- Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: an illustrated catalogue, Mildred Budny with a Foreword by David M. Wilson and an Introduction by R. I. Page, 2 vols (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997)
- A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College, Montague Rhodes James, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907-08)
- Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Other Items of Related Interest in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, Simon Keynes, OEN Subsidia, 18 (Binghamton, NY: CEMERS, 1992)
Digital Image Collections at the Cambridge University Library has three medieval materials: Gutenberg Bible, which is accessible only from the University of Cambridge; MS. Ee.3.59, The Life of King Edward the Confessor, an illustrated Anglo-Norman verse; Book of Deer, Images from the illuminated tenth-Century Gospel book.
Colleges:
Parker Library: Parker on the Web. Corpus Christi College and the Stanford University Libraries have launched a prototype of 'Parker on the Web', which is offered to interested parties free of charge. They seek to replicate the entire collection as a virtual library, and a complete version of the full site is expected sometime in 2007.
St. John's College: M. R. James, Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of St John's College, Cambridge in available on line with updates. The library is also building Medieval Manuscript Image Index on line.
Trinity College: M. R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: A Descriptive Catalogue is available on line.
♦ Canterbury, Christ Church Priory and St. Augustine's Abbey
The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover; the catalogues of the libraries of Christ Church Priory and St. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's Priory at Dover, introduction and identifications of the extant remains, by Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)
♦ Dover, St. Martin's Priory
The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover; the catalogues of the libraries of Christ Church Priory and St. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's Priory at Dover, introduction and identifications of the extant remains, by Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)
♦ Durham, Durham University Library
Medieval Manuscripts in the University Library are described in the Draft Catalogue of Medieval Manuscripts in the Search Room by Dr A. I. Doyle and Mr A. J. Piper, and some of the descreptions are available on this page.
♦ Edinburgh, the National Library of Scotland
None of their medieval manuscripts is on the online catalogue yet. There are two published catalogues: Catalogue of Manuscripts acquired since 1925, 8 vols (National Library of Scotland and HMSO, 1938-92); Summary Catalogue of the Advocates' Manuscripts (HMSO, 1971). Unpublished catalogues, inventories and indexes relating to the manuscript collections are available only in the library.
Under its Digital Library, The Murthly Hours and The Auchinleck Manuscript are available.
♦ Glasgow, University of Glasgow
Records for most of the manuscript collections have been incorporated into the online manuscripts catalogue. The descriptions of special collections are available, and particularly the following collections would be of interest to medievalists:
Hunterian Collection includes a huge collection of medieval or Renaissance manuscripts and incunabula, some of which are available at the Digitisation Project of Middle English Manuscripts in the Hunterian Collection.
Euing Collection contains a collection of incunabula.
Ferguson Collection includes incunabula and manuscripts, which are of alchemical interest. Several date back to the 15th century.
Trinity College Library contains some incunabula.
Veitch Collection comprises mostly early printed editions of the medieval scholastic philosophers.
The World of Chaucer is an electronic catalogue of an exhibition of manuscripts and early printed books from Glasgow University Library held at the Hunterian Museum 15 May to 28 August 2004.
Some collections include materilas, which may interst medievalists:
Collection of Chapbook
Gemmell Collection contains editions of the Dance of Death and associated critical works.
Stirling Maxwell Collection has Sir William Stirling Maxwell’s collection of emblem and device literature.
Centre for Emblem Studies in Glasgow has been working on the Emblem Digitisation Project.
The information about how to access the miscellaneous manuscripts in the university can be found at Manuscript Collection.
Published Catalogues:
- The Glory of the Page: Medieval & Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Glasgow University Library, Introduction & Catalogue by Nigel Thorp (London: Published for Glasgow University Library and the Art Gallery of Ontario by Miller, c1987)
♦ Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Libaray
Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library, R. M. Thomson (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1989)
♦ Liverpool, University of Liverpool
Its Speciall Collection 'holds more than 200 medieval and renaissance manuscripts: 56 owned by the University, 126 Mayer MSS on deposit from National Museums Liverpool and 60 Radcliffe MSS and fragments on deposit from the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool.' Many have survived in their medieval bindings.
The manuscripts are described in:
- N.R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, III: Lampeter-Oxford (Oxford, 1983)
- Medieval and Early Renaissance Treasures in the North-West, Catalogue of an exhibition at Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester (Manchester, 1976)
- Medieval Manuscripts on Merseyside, Catalogue of an exhibition held in the University Art Gallery, Liverpool ... and in the Courtauld Institute Galleries, London (Liverpool: Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Liverpool, 1993)
- Joseph Mayer of Liverpool, 1803-1886, edited by Margaret Gibson and Susan M. Wright (London, 1988)
♦ London in General
Robinson, P. R., Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c.888-1600 in London Libraries, 2 vols (London: British Library, 2003)
♦ London, The British Library
This online catalogue, which is still under construction, was created by scanning the published catalogues. The British Library's catalogues of manuscripts are traditionally constructed in two parts, descriptions and indexes. This catalogue allows you to search descriptions and indexes separately using different techniques. The results screens allow you to move from one to the other by clicking on the links displayed in blue.
The catalogue of The Cotton Manuscripts is available in itself in searchable form.
Treasures in Full has Digital Images of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, printed by Caxton (1st and 2nd editions) and Johann Gutenberg's Bible. Post-Medieval Festival Books will also be published on line.
Online Gallery: European Manuscripts gives access to Turning the Pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels (written and decorated at the end of the seventh century, Anglo-Saxton glosses were added in the mid tenth century); the Luttrell Psalter (made around 1325-1335); and the Sherborne Missal (made around 1400-1407). In its 'showcases', there are medieval books such as Bedford Hours, Benedictional of St Aethelwold, Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander, Coronation Book of Charles V, Harley Latin Gospels, and Roman de la Rose.
Online Gallery: English Literature gives pages on Beowulf, Malory, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Digital Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
Images on Line has few images of medieval manuscripts, which can be purchased and downloaded directly. This service is for designing or commercial purposes rather than scholarly research.
♦ London, National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum
Historical Introduction to the Collection of Illuminated Letters and Borders in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, John W. Bradley (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1901)
Records from the Special Collections are available on the Online Catalogue.
♦ London, Westminster Abbey
The manuscripts of Westminster Abbey, J. Armitage Robinson and Montague Rhodes James Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909)
♦ Manchester, The John Rylands University Library Special Collections
The John Rylands library, Deasgate is now temporarily closed, but will be reopened in 2006. The English Manuscripts Collection includes 15th-century manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (English MSS 63, 113); a richly-illuminated copy of John Lydgate's Seige of Troy, and a copy of his translation of Boccaccio's Falle of Pryncys. It also holds some 4,000 incunables.
You can see some of the treasures of the library at the online exhibition, Unlocking the Rylands.
Published Catalogues:
- Hand-List of the Collections of French and Italian Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, Moses Tyson (Manchester: Manchester University Press [etc.], 1930)
♦ Oxford, in general
Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 435-1600 in Oxford Libraries, A. G. Watson, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)
♦ Oxford, Bodleian Library, the Western Manuscripts Section
There are three main series of catalogues which span large parts of the medieval collections:
The Quarto series which were published between 1895-1953.
The Summary Catalogue which cover all manuscripts acquired by the Bodleian up to and including 1915.
There are also micellaneous catalogues.
See also other resources provided by the library site. There are also unpublished new accession catalogues. The indexes to the catalogues provide references to named individuals or places.
Electronic Catalogue of Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts is currently under development.
Digital Library Project is a gateway to several projects regarding medieval material.
Western Manuscripts to c. 1500: This is the home page for pre-c.1500 western manuscripts, which form one part of the Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. It also gives a link to Browse Images of Medieval Manuscripts.
Early Manuscripts at Oxford University: Digital facsimiles of complete manuscripts cover manuscripts at Bodleian and other libraries in Oxford.
'Towards an Image Catalogue, Updated' contains scans of the miscellaneous images which have been available since 1994.
Post-mediaeval, but probably some interest to the medievalist: Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads covers the printed materials range from the 16th- to the 20th-century.
Published Catalogues:
- The Medieval Books of Merton College, F. M. Powicke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931)
♦ Worcester, Worcester Cathedral Library
A descriptive catalogue of the medieval manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library, by R.M. Thomson, with a contribution on the bindings by Michael Gullick (Rochester, NY: published on behalf of the dean and chapter of Worcester Cathedral by Brewer, 2001)
Europe
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
♦ Austria, Salzburg, University Library Salzburg
Online manuscript catalogue and some images of the manuscripts are avaible on this page.
♦ Czech Republic, Prague, National Library of the Czech Republic
The library runs the Memoria Project. The site is currently under development, but when it is complete, a large collection of medieval manuscripts images will be available on line.
♦ Denmark, Center for Håndskriftstudier i Danmark (The Institute for the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts in Denmark)
This is a very extensive page on Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, Book of Hours 1400-1530. Late Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts on the Web gives a useful list of manuscripts on the web.
♦ Denmark, Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library)
The Manuscript and Rare Book Department has both Online and Published Catalogues listed. It has also started to publish digital facsimile editions of some of the manuscripts.
♦ France, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
The site gives a bibliography of cataloges of the manuscripts in their Manuscripts Department. All the content and main tools will be soon translated in English too.
♦ Germany in general
Handschriftenkataloge, manuscripta mediaevalia. Digitized corpus of manuscript catalogues in several German libraries.
♦ Germany, Cologne, Cologne Cathedral Library
The Medieval Manuscripts of the Cologne Cathedral Library, Volume I, MSS 1-100, was complise by Diane Warne Anderson and Jonathan Black.
♦ Germany, Dresden, Saxon State Library
The Library of Congress hosted an exhibition of 'Treasures from the Saxon State Library' in 1996, and its online exhibition, which contains a page on their Medieval and Renaissance Mansucripts, is still available.
♦ Ireland, Dublin, Trinity College Library Dublin Ireland
Trinity College Library Dublin: Descriptive Catalogue of the Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Manuscripts, Marvin L. Colker, with an Introduction by William O'Sullivan (Aldershot: Published for Trinity College Library Dublin by Scolar Press, 1991)
♦ Netherland, Hague, The Koninklijke Bibliotheek
It has One Hundred Highlights from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek which presents a selection of manuscripts, printed works, book bindings, and specimens from the paper history collection in the Department of Special Collections with explanatory notes. Images are categorised by subjects.
Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts allows browsing the database by subject and also searching it in English.
♦ Sweden, Lund, Lund University
St. Laurentius Digital Manuscript Library: Manuscript Department of the University Library, Lund is digitizing and making accessible on line its collection of Medieval manuscripts.
♦ Switzerland
Online catalogue of medieval manuscripts in Switzerland.
USA
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
There are two monumental published catalogues of the manuscripts in American and Canadian libraries:
- De Ricci, Seymour, with the assistance of W. J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1935-40)
- Faye, C. U., and W. H. Bond, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada: Supplement (New York: Bibliographical Society of America, 1962)
There is an ambitious project by the Uncatalogued Manuscript Control Center, to provide 'a corrected, updated, machine-readable census of manuscripts in American and Canadian libraries, as well as a flexible and expandable computer database which will permit librarians, curators and scholars of the future to record changes and additions to the census quickly and easily'.
The site so far has:
- Privisional List of North American Institutions with pre-1600 Manuscript Holdings
- List of Relocated and Untracted Collections
- List of Private Collections in the Census and Supplement
♦ Chicago, IL, The Newberry Library
Pre-1500 European Manuscripts Collection includes 'good representations of
- Classical, Patristic, and Humanistic authors
- Early texts in music, medicine, and science
- A wide variety of genres, including alphabet books, Bibles, books of hours, breviaries, calendars, capitularies, cartularies, florilegia, genealogies, lapidaries, missals, prayers, and sermons.'
The site also gives a bibliography of Bibliographical Guide to Newberry Collections.
♦ Collegeville, MN, the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, at St. John's University
HMML houses more than 90,000 manuscripts from Europe, Ethiopia, and the Middle East preserved on microfilm and in digital format. Their Manuscript Catalogue contains listings for nearly all manuscripts photographed by HMML. The Online Catalogue Status and handlists of Microfilm Collections (in Word-format) from some countries such as England, Irealnd and Czech are available.
Some of the digital images are available on Vivarium.
The Saint John's Biblie is a project to reproduce an illuminated medieval bible by hand.
♦ New Haven, CT, Yale University Library
For their Special Collection, see 2. Accessing Medieval Manuscripts, C.
Digitized Manuscripts in Middle English under this Portal.
The library site also provides
Medieval Studies Guide, which also has a selected bibliography for
Medieval Studies. The majority of thier manuscripts are of a religious nature, and the collection illustrates the history of manuscript
illumination from the ninth to sixteenth centuries. Highights in the department are available on line. Its site on Medieval Studies gives a set of links to the Medieval Studies; Pre-1600 manuscripts at Stanford
are listed in a pdf file. It has some
Medieval Manuscript Leaves images, which are taken from books written in various European
scriptoria in 12th-16th centuries. The Library owns Middle English manuscripts texts, including the Ellesmere Chaucer, the Towneley Plays,
the Chester cycle, four MSS of "Piers Plowman", and four of the "Prick of conscience", various MSS of
Hoccleve, Gower, Lydgate, and Wycliffe. Descriptions of the manuscript collections can be found in: Some collection-level records for manuscript collections and few records for single items are added to
the Online Catalogue. With its
Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library, you can search manuscripts by
Authors, Titles, Places and Dates of Origin, Scribes and Artists. The Library has a
Incunables Collection. Its pages on
Medieval Studies and on
the History of the Book are useful sources of information.♦
New York, NY, The Pierpont Morgan Library
♦
Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Library, Rare Books & Special Collections
♦
Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Library
♦
Rochester, NY,
Cary Collection
♦
San Marino, CA, The Huntington Library
♦
Stanford, CA, Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources
and Beyond
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
♦ New Zealand, Aukland City Libraries
The library has Medieval Manuscripts Online and also a virtual exhibision, Is it Real Gold? Medieval Books 1150-1510, which is an interest to students.