University Libraries

Universities hold many of the manuscripts and manuscript digitalisation projects currently on the internet. I’ll only introduce a few here, since there are so many, but hopefully from these sites you will be able to search for others. You can also search for university official web sites, navigate to the library section, and look for special projects or collections. Often you will find more useful information this way than you will by using Google, Yahoo, or even another university resource page.

Again, I only present a few of these sites to you in these articles, but I will try and not duplicate too many of them--if a site appears more than once, you know it must be good!

University of Southampton
The Wessex Parallel WebTexts are hosted on their site, developed by one of their faculty and partly funded by them. This is the excellent digitalization project of the Harley Lyrics.

University of Michigan
This site hosts the Middle English Compendium, which contains not only a huge section of Middle English Prose and Verse but also a very valuable Middle English Dictionary that would be of help when you begin to read manuscripts.

University of Virginia
More Middle English texts can be found here in the University of Virginia’s Middle English Collection--most of these texts are published in this American mirror on behalf of the Oxford University Text Archive; another academic connection!

Georgetown University
This university houses the widely-acclaimed Labyrinth, a search engine with many links and resources relating to medieval studies. Many of the manuscripts you see linked from this website can be found using this search engine.

University of Rochester
The Rossell Hope Robbins Library is hosted and maintained by the University of Rochester--this is where we find the Camelot Project, the Robin Hood Project, the Medieval Alexander Project, and the TEAMS Middle English Texts.

Introductions to Palaeography

“Palaeography means, in the strict sense, the study of ancient handwriting, and its basic objects are these: first, to read ancient texts with accuracy; secondly, to date and localize their handwriting.”
--Julian Brown

Palaeography can be an immensely challenging and rewarding study. With the advent of the internet, it has become a field more easily accessible to the general public. Below are some articles, online texts, and interactive tutorials to introduce you to palaeography.

I. Medieval Writing: History, Heritage and Data Source
This website contains tutorials (you’ll need at least Flash 5 for some of them) that involve real manuscripts from the 4th-15th centuries. There are also many introductory level articles, glossaries, and an excellent set of links to other resources.

II. Palaeography: reading old handwriting 1500-1800
The UK National Archives also has a Palaeography tutorial, but it should be noted that the examples are not medieval but renaissance and early modern texts. However, using this tutorial provides an good introductory basis for studying palaeography.

III. Medieval Manuscripts in Dutch Collections
These pages contain a variety of images, organized by script and accompanied by a glossary and an extensive bibliography .

IV. A. Cappelli’s "Dictionary of Latin and Italian Abbreviations"
Cappelli’s Dizionario is a standard work on palaeographical abbreviations. If you intend to work on medieval manuscripts, Latin abbreviations are very common and this text is very useful.

V. M. P. Brown’s “Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms”
M. P. Brown is one of the Curator’s of Western Manuscripts at the British Library, and has written widely and well about palaeography. This is her glossary on palaeographical terms and it is a popular reference book at universities.

There are also various other explorations of codicology (the study of the codex, or book) and palaeography attached to specific projects, like the Aberdeen Bestiary, the Ormulum Project, the Nero A.X. Project, Labyrinth, and the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies. And this is just to name a few!