The British Library’s Online ResourcesĪ google search for medieval manuscripts will turn up many possibilities, some more informative and reliable than others, so it’s best as you’re first learning to focus on library and university sites to be sure what you find is accurate. When manuscripts are digitized and images made available online, however, colour is the norm, which means that short of turning the pages and smelling the vellum (or calfskin), the viewer can actually experience the book much as someone sitting right in front of it would. See, for instance, the fine collection (listed online) of Facsimiles of Medieval Manuscripts held by the University of North Carolina. Yet they are almost always produced with little or no colour to avoid prohibitive printing expenses, and still these books tend to be very costly and found only in university libraries. Many of these are extraordinarily good–Pearsall and Scott’s facsimile of the illustrated Douce 104 manuscript of Piers Plowman, Woodward and Stevens’ facsimile of the lavishly decorated Ellesmere Chaucer, and Bevington’s facsimile of the Macro Plays are excellent examples. Before the web existed, those unable to visit medieval manuscripts in person had only print facsimiles to fall back on. The internet has, in fact, revolutionized the study of manuscripts (often abbreviated MSS or singular MS). There are, however, more accessible options for those who don’t share these credentials, beginning with the excellent manuscript resources now available online. Although you might be lucky enough to see a few especially important medieval books (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for instance, or the Book of Kells) on display under glass at museums and libraries, for the most part only specialists with the proper training and references, as well as the need to read these precious manuscripts for research or publications are allowed to consult them in person. Huntington Library in California and the Newberry Library in Illinois. There are large collections in both England and Europe–the British Library in London, the various Oxford Libraries and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France preserve particularly significant numbers–and some North American libraries have substantial collections as well, like the Henry E. Medieval manuscripts are generally found in major research libraries, though some still reside in their original homes at cathedrals, colleges and even private estates.
MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS INITIAL PAGE BEFORE 1000 AD FULL
So each medieval manuscript is as full of surprises as challenges, and well worth a careful look. He or she would also and inevitably introduce errors, both accidental and deliberate, to the texts copied, which would then require adjustment or correction.
He or she (for there were women scribes in the Middle Ages as well) might gather a number of texts not found together anywhere else combine and even edit them in original ways and choose a layout and decoration that worked for the materials and the client. A medieval book (or codex, the Latin word for “tree trunk,” used because early books were made of wooden boards coated with wax) is essentially like a modern book, but instead of producing multiple copies with each exactly the same as the others like publishers today do, a medieval scribe made a unique, hand-written copy of the texts he or his master or his patron wanted copied. So charters and scrolls, fragments and books are all manuscripts, but it is the last that are most commonly referred to as manuscripts proper. Strictly speaking, any hand-written document is a manuscript–the Latin manuscriptus literally means “written” (scriptus) “by hand” (manu).
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