Unusual Online Reproductions of Medieval Manuscripts

Online reproductions take many forms, from simple textual transcriptions to multimedia productions. There are some reproductions that are totally innovative that form a very unusual group of reproductions of medieval manuscripts.

The Luttrell Psalter
A non-profit group of filmmakers, actors, craftsmen--indeed, an entire community--has come together to bring to life this manuscript on film through a number of recreations. Below is the trailer for their upcoming film. Clothes have been recreated, as have ploughs, music, dances, food, buildings, and a host of other things. Here is a link to their website, where you can find more information about this project.



Revival Clothing
This is a company that sells recreations of medieval clothing as well as anachronistic interpretations (they use cotton and elastic in some things, which is not period-authentic). Since there are few extant garments that give us a good idea of how medieval people dressed, art is used to help decide how things fit and wore--those this was sometimes sculpture or paintings, it was more often than not a manuscript that provided the last word on a garment. Choose a garment from their catalogue and scroll down to see their “historical inspirations” (“inspirations” because even manuscript art is not precise and the closures of some of the clothing can prove tricky). They provide shelf marks, folio numbers, and proper manuscript documentation for most of their items--in specific, you can see the Gaston Phoebus clothes in the men’s section are all traced back to the Bibliothéque Nationale’s “Book of the Hunt”.

The Roman de la Rose Musical
This struck me as a completely unorthodox renewal of medieval literature from manuscripts until I remembered Monty Python’s Holy Grail and the absurd ensuing musical Spamalot. This is a student project, with a website all its own, but I present to you the trailer, here:

National Libraries

Countries often see manuscripts as cultural icons and as national treasures. Books were once incredibly valuable objects, made by hand and with very expensive materials: aside from their monetary value, they carried with them a national identity. To simply possess a shelf full of books was an amazing thing. National libraries still value their medieval manuscripts, but are now trying to save them from deterioration over time and trying to make them available to the public (something very rare, and certainly impossible for their original viewers).

The National Library of Scotland
In addition to more modern manuscripts, this library contains the Murthly Hours (a devotional book of hours) and the Auchinleck Manuscript (lyrics, stories, poetry and prose) reproduced in full, with accompanying commentary, transcription.

The British Library
This library has a conservation and publication program that has made very important manuscripts available to the general public in a display setting that appeals to many. Their “Turning the Pages” program simulates actually turning the pages of a manuscript, and transcriptions, translations, and commentary are available at the click of a button. The images of these manuscripts are high-res and detailed, professional photographs.

Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru (The National Library of Wales)
This library has made available numerous selections and some whole manuscripts in a number of languages, including books of Taliesin, of the Mabinogi, an edition of Chaucer, a miscellany in Middle English, and several historical chronicles. These manuscripts have their own descriptive pages that put them in a historical context.

Bibliothéque Nationale de France
France’s national library contains selections from many medieval manuscripts, including that of Jean of Berry’s book of hours and Gaston Phoebus’ Book of the Hunt, as well as Froissart’s 15th century historical chronicles, an earlier atlas, a scientific work, and a breviary.

Selected Images

Selected images of manuscripts are placed online usually because the manuscripts are too damaged to be handled very much without expert care, or because the department putting up the manuscript was not funded well enough to place the entire manuscript on the internet. Such is the case in some of the following manuscripts.

As you can see, though, placing only part of a manuscript online does not necessarily take away from the overall presentation. For some online presentations, the audience is made up of the general public, schoolchildren, or scholars that are more interested in the subject of the piece rather than the piece itself.

The Ellesmere Chaucer Facsimile
Long Island University has placed miniatures of the pilgrims of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales online in this page. Though there are actually 31 pilgrims (or 29, depending on your research), there are only 23 portraits here: the ones missing are the tradesmen. If you click on a single image until it takes you to a high-resolution version of the image.

Byzantine Medieval Hypertexts
This web site was produced by a doctoral student at the Univ. of Texas at Austin, working with images produced by faculty at Univ. Notre Dame. The text used here is the Theodore Psalter.

Treasures from the UK National Archives
This site provides selections from a number of manuscripts, including a copy of the Magna Carta, the Domesday Book, the Treaty of Calais, and others. The images are not high-resolution or annotated for professional use but described for the general public. Options on this website include viewing a transcript, sending as an e-card, and bookmarking the site with Facebook, Reddit, or Yahoo--definitely for the general public!

Gaston Phoebus, “Book of the Hunt”
This hunting manual has been cropped and scanned only for its miniatures. However, the miniatures can be enlarged to a fairly good resolution image. This manuscript has been placed online by the Bibliothéque National de France.

Stories & Fiction

Stories of adventure were called “romances” in the Middle Ages--a word very nearly divorced from the definition we think of today. Along with romances, there were stories of the lives of saints (called vitae), allegories, and song lyrics--a huge variety when you see them as a whole, but unfortunately not too much of them have been put online. This is a very small selection of an enormous amount of literature.

The Auchinleck Manuscript
The National Library of Scotland has placed this entire manuscript on display online, with commentary, translation, and transcription. There is also a history of the manuscript available and an extensive bibliography, should you be interested in reading further. The website offers search capabilities, a glossary, and a lexicon. If you are new to Middle English or to manuscript studies, I recommend you start with this site.

Wessex Parallel WebTexts: Medieval Lyrics
This site hosts translations, transcriptions, and digitised images of the Harley Lyrics and several other brief pieces of Middle English literature. There is an introduction to grammar, a section on translating Middle English, and notes on technical terms. There is also an index of first lines, for your convenience. If you are interested in medieval song lyrics, this is an excellent site from which to start.

The Bodleian Library: Early Manuscripts
Manuscripts such as “Piers Plowman” (an allegory take about a farmer named Piers who has a dream full of adventures whose morals apply to his time) and Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” have been put online here in full, but with no transcription, translation, or commentary. However, if you are interested in studying these pieces, there is an enormous amount of literature about them in other places online or in your local library.

The National Library of Wales: the Mabinogi
The Mabinogion is a collection of mythological tales in Middle Welsh that have a partially Arthurian tinge to them but stand aloof from other Arthurian tales by story elements that are often unfamiliar. These manuscripts are in Middle Welsh without transcript, translation, or commentary, but there are translations online which you can use in conjunction with this project.

The National Library of Wales: A Middle English Miscellany
This manuscript is full of a variety of things, like the Auchinleck Manuscript from the National Library of Scotland, from Arthurian poetry to a treatise on grafting trees. Although accompanied by an introduction there is no transcription or translation readily available online. However, since some of the script is quite legible it might be worth it to challenge yourself by trying to read it straight from the page!

The Book of Hours

A book of hours is a private devotional book that provided prayers for different times of the day; monks often prayed together as a community as many as seven times a day, and though a pious man or woman outside the cloister might not be able to celebrate with the church as a whole, prayer books provided guidelines for personal prayer.

That was the idea, anyway: prayer books were customizable and beautiful objects of art that were also status symbols and worked the way calendars do for us today. Usually included was a calendar of widely observed holy days (a concept from which we still have “holidays”) that could be fitted to any year, and could hold a variety of prayers that could be tailored to different events--for different times of the year, for different purposes during a church service--even for birthdays and deaths.

The Murthly Hours
The Murthly Hours are kept by the National Library of Scotland and are in a mixture of languages, including Latin, Old French, and some of the earliest recorded Scottish Gaelic. This book is from the late 13th century and has been completely scanned and placed online. This site is highly recommended.

Petites Heures du Jean de Berry
The Bibliothéque Nationale de France has provided access to a great deal of Jean of Berry’s “small” book of hours on their website. In addition to miniature paintings of each of the 12 months, there are numerous illustrations of biblical events.

Les trés riches heures du Duc de Berry
The Très Riches Heures de Duc de Berry is a 15th century example commissioned by the same duke of Berry. It is not completely integrated online but the most elaborate miniatures have been scanned and linked here.

A Hypertext Book of Hours
Though the texts and miniatures are drawn chiefly from a 16th century book, the format in which they are laid out should prove helpful to the beginner to understand how these books are laid out and exactly what they contained--in this edition, all texts are translated from the Latin (on the left side of the page) to English (right side).