Medieval History: Digital Collections
"Medieval" or "Middle Ages" generally refers to the history of Europe from roughly the mid-fifth century to the end of the fifteenth century (450-1500).
Databases
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Empire Online This link opens in a new windowThis resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and it's theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
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Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new windowThis resource consists of full-colour images of the original medieval manuscripts that make up these family letter collections and full-text-searchable transcripts from the printed editions, where they are available.
A plethora of topics are covered in these collections, including trade, warfare, arranging advantageous marriages, arguments between parents and children, matters of inheritance, births and deaths, estate management, legal disputes, domestic finances, women and their role in the family and everyday social and domestic life. -
Medieval Sourcesonline This link opens in a new windowContains several full text books, which include hundreds of original medieval history documents compiled for the teaching and study of history.
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Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new windowThis collection presents manuscripts of some of the most important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period.
The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia. It is an indispensable source for scholars of medieval travel, geography, exploration, trade, literature and medieval postcolonial studies.
Digitized Collections
These are some of the digitization projects to provide access to resources in original languages for medievalists.
The aim of the publishing program of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, going back to the early nineteenth century, is to provide scholarly editions of all documents pertaining to the history of medieval Germany including relations with other countries. All MGH publication in print for more than five years are accessible online.
Ut per litteras apostolicas is the electronic version of the registers and letters of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century popes
Corpus Corporum is an ongoing project at the University of Zurich meant to provide a platform for publishing and access to searchable Latin texts including the Patrologia Latina and Aristotelis Physica, ten Latin translations of Aristotle's Physics.
Government & Legal Resources
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Parliament Rolls of Medieval England This link opens in a new windowThis new edition reproduces the rolls edited in RP in their entirety, plus those subsequently published by Cole, Maitland, and Richardson and Sayles as well as a substantial amount of material never previously published, together with a full translation of all the texts from the three languages used by the medieval clerks (Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English). It also includes an introduction to every parliament known to have been held by an English king (or in his name) between 1275 and 1504, whether or not the roll for that parliament survives. Where appropriate, appendices of supplementary material are also provided, including information about the parliament in question derived from sources other than the roll.
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English Medieval Legal Documents: A Compilation of Published SourcesExtensive bibliography of English law sources. Links to full-text are included wherever available but you may need to consult section 9 of the guide ('Online Sources') to learn which databases provide access to which documents.
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Medieval Documents: 400 -1399: Avalon Project (Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy)The Avalon Project lists several primary source documents that relevant to medieval history.
Texts
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CELT: Corpus of Electronic TextsIreland'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 over 19 million words, in 1636 contemporary and historical documents from many areas, including literature, medicine, and the other arts.
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Florilegium UrbanumPresents a selection of primary source texts illustrative of various aspects of medieval urban life. Texts are grouped under four headings: community, economy, government and lifecycle.
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Hanover Historical Texts Project: Middle AgesSmall collection of letters of Crusaders.
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Internet Sacred Text ArchiveArchive of primary texts relating to all major world religions and many other spiritual practices, including all major scriptures.
Art
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Artstor on JSTOR This link opens in a new windowSearchable database of digital images and associated catalog data within JSTOR, with new image collections added several times a year. Artstor covers many time periods and cultures, and documents the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, anthropology, ethnographic and women's studies, as well as many other forms of visual culture. Users can search, view, download and organize images.
To download images users MUST register for a personal account.
MOBILE USERS: For Apple: mobile.artstor.org. For Android: Download app from Google Play.
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The Rose Window: Online Stained Glass Photographic ArchiveThis website provides access to images of medieval and early modern stained glass.