Medieval Studies

The Abbey Library of St. Gall is one of the oldest monastic libraries in the world; its valuable holdings illustrate the development of European culture and document the cultural achievements of the Monastery of St. Gall from the 7th century until the dissolution of the Abbey in the year 1805.

The Bodleian Library holds a highly important collection of manuscripts from medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire. The manuscripts are mostly on parchment or paper and in codex form, and are written both in Latin and Greek and in the European vernaculars.

This database contains descriptions of all medieval western manuscripts up to c. 1550 written in Latin script and preserved in public and semi-public collections in the Netherlands. These include the collections of libraries, museums, archives, collections of monastic orders and some private institutions open to researchers.

Three large online iconographic databases identify and describe the illuminated manuscripts preserved in public libraries in France. Together, they provide online access to illuminated medieval manuscripts and allows the consultation of more than 100,000 records of Western or Eastern manuscripts dated to life in the nineteenth century.

The Speculum Theologie is a collection of moral and theological diagrams frequently used in the late Middle Ages to explicate and to elaborate upon various elements of Christian faith and moral theology. In sum, the diagrams express the basics of the catechism and neatly map out the interrelationships of Biblical teaching and moral behavior.

The Carolingian Manuscripts owned by the Bibliothèque nationale de France form one of the richest collections in the world. The almost 479 manuscripts from the 8th-10th centuries were made in many different centers throughout the realm.