UCC Library: Medieval Studies: Free Web Sources

Online Manuscript Catalogues & Guides

British Library Digital Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
Common Manuscript Abbreviations in Irish (UCC)
From Dept. of Modern Irish, UCC.
Manuscripts Online: Written Culture 1000 to 1500
Manuscript Sources for British History
From Institute of Historical Research, University of London

New Testament, Evangelist Mark, Walters Manuscript W.525, fol. 56r From Walters Art Museum Illuminated Manuscripts © Public Domain

Collections of Digitised Manuscripts

Bibliotheca Palatina digital
from Heidelberg University Library. Virtual reconstruction of the once most famous book collection in Germany
Bibliothèque virtuelle des manuscrits médiévaux (BVMM)
The virtual library of medieval manuscripts (BVMM), developed by the Institute for Research and History of Texts (IRHT-CNRS), provides access to the reproduction of a large selection of manuscripts, from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century.
British Library Digitised Manuscripts
View digitised copies of manuscripts and archives in the British Library’s collections, with descriptions of their contents.
Carolingian Culture at Reichenau & St. Gall
Digital versions of two of the gems surviving from the monasteries of Reichenau and St. Gall the unique architectural drawing known as the Plan of St. Gall and the extensive ninth-century library collections of the two monasteries.
Codices Electronici Sangallenses
Digital Abbey Library of St. Gallen
Digital Bodleian
Search or browse collections of manuscripts from the Bodleian Library
Digital Scriptorium
A consortium of American libraries and museums committed to free online access to their collections of pre-modern manuscripts.
DMMapp
The DMMapp (Digitized Medieval Manuscripts app) links to more than 500 libraries in the world. Each one of these contains digitized medieval manuscripts that can be browsed for free.
E-Codices: Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland
Currently the virtual library contains 2180 manuscripts from 86 different collections.
Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas)
Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Collection: Database and Digital Images
Irish Script on Screen (ISOS)
From School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies - to create digital images of Irish manuscripts, and to make these images - together with relevant commentary - accessible online.
The Labyrinth - resources for Medieval Studies
(Georgetown University) - provides links to useful resources, including collections of manuscripts
Pinakes
Greek Texts and manuscripts

Individual Digitised Manuscripts & Printed Books

The 'De Grey' Hours
from the National Library of Wales.
The Aberdeen Bestiary
The Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24) is considered to be one of the best examples of its type due to its lavish and costly illuminations. The manuscript, written and illuminated in England around 1200, is of added interest since it contains notes, sketches and other evidence of the way it was designed and executed.
The Bedford Hours
The Bedford Hours is one of the most lavish surviving medieval prayerbooks. Made in Paris between 1410 and 1430, its prayers are illustrated by 38 large images and over 1,200 small marginal roundels.
The Book of Kells
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 Burnet Psalter
This fifteenth-century manuscript (AUL MS 25) was bequeathed to Marischal College, Aberdeen by one of its most famous graduates, Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), Bishop of Salisbury, historian, theological writer, and adviser to William III.
The Luttrell Psalter
from the British Library
Mercator's Atlas of Europe
from the British Library. Put together in the early 1570s by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, perhaps the best-known mapmaker of all time, to help with planning the grand tour of Europe of his patron's son, the crown prince of Cleves.
Sample pages from Irish language manuscripts in UCC Library
St. Alban's Psalter
The book is important because of its outstanding illuminations, particularly the miniatures painted by the so-called Alexis Master, which are among the finest examples of English Romanesque painting. The Chanson of Alexis is the earliest surviving example of Old French literature and is a key text for the development of the French language.
Additional titles from the British Library
All virtual books listed here.

Open Access Research

Search CORA for open access to UCC's scholarly research publications & theses.

What is Open Access (OA)?

Open Access to research aims to provide free, unrestricted online access to scholarly research publications. Traditionally scholarly research has been published in journals where the user, or their institution, pays a fee to access the publication. Learn more by viewing this video:

Finding Open Access Research

Open access publications can be found through internet searches and through other resources which harvest records from repositories and aggregate them for improved searching:

RIAN: Ireland's National Database of Research Papers
OpenAIRE: European open access publications and data
OAIster: search open access collections worldwide
BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

You can search BASE from here:

Tutorials

Introduction to Manuscript Studies
from the University of Alberta. It covers medieval paleography and codicology. It also has glossaries and an extensive bibliography.
Medieval & Renaissance Handwriting Tutorials
from University of Leeds. App tutorials for medieval and renaissance handwriting.
Old English Online
Open access website designed to help read Old English, whether you are a complete beginner or an advanced learner. It introduces topic by topic, the structure and sound of the Old English language in easy to digest chunks with plenty of opportunity to practice along the way.
Reading Old Documents
Interactive tutorials from National Archives, UK. It covers introductory & advanced Latin, paleography & Latin paleography, Roman numerals and coins.
Research Guidance for Manuscripts & Special Collections
from the University of Nottingham. It covers dating documents, weights & measures, accounting records, deeds, manorial records, maps & plans, medieval books and medieval documents.

Themed Resources

General
Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
Geography
Monsoon Winds to the Land of Gold (Primary sources on trading networks and geographic factors relating to the maritime spice trade from Southeast Asia to the Roman Empire and Han China 100 BCE - 100 CE).
Silk Road Narratives (Historical texts and maps from 1st - 17th century CE).

Law & Diplomacy
Avalon Project (Covers law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government).
English Medieval Legal Documents 600-1535 CE Wiki

Literature
Online Medieval and Classical Library Browse by author/title/genre/language).
TEAMS Middle English Texts

Military History
De Re Militari (Sources on medieval and renaissance history).

Religion
Guide to Early Church Documents
Hanover Historical Texts Project: Middle Ages (Crusaders).
Internet Sacred Text Archive
Islamic Medical Manuscripts
Primary Source Material in Religion and Politics
Urban Studies
Florilegium Urbanum (Medieval urban life).

Women
Epistolae: Medieval Women's Letters (4th - 13th centuries CE).
Monastic Matrix (Women's religious communities 400-1600 CE)