Gould Library

Carleton College’s Gould Library offers a variety of helpful resources for MARS students.

  • Isabela Oliveira, the research librarian liaison for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, is available to consult with students. Visit Isabela’s web page to find contact and appointment scheduling information.
  • The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Subject Research Guide provides information on locating books and articles and links to databases and online sources.
  • Special Collections at Carleton, curated by Special Collections librarian Jackie Beckey, houses a rich collection of facsimile manuscripts, maps, incunabula, and early printed materials directly relevant to the minor, all of which are available to students. To schedule an appointment to access these materials, send your request for an appointment to specialcollections@carleton.edu.
  • We will soon have an online search tool to explore our collection.

Regesta Imperii. OPAC searchable bibliographic database

The Regesta Imperii project is “a chronologically record all activities evidenced by charters and other sources of the Roman-German kings and emperors from the Carolingians up to Maximilian I (ca. 751-1519) as well as of the popes of the early Middle Ages and High Middle Ages in the form of German “Regesten” (abstracts). The Project has assembled a wonderfully rich, free, and searchable bibliographic database of primary and secondary literature related to the project (and they define the project broadly). It is not a full text database but it has remarkable reach. Highly

Online Textual Resources

The following websites offer free digital access to dictionaries and editions of primary source documents (often in Latin).

Documenta Catholica Omnia

Created by a Catholic lay organization called the Cooperatorum Veritatis Societas, the aim of this website is to provide online access to all published documents of the Catholic Church from its origins to the present. Among the collections to be found in .pdf format on the site are Mansi’s Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova Amplissima Collectio, the Acta Sanctorum (in progress), parts of the MGH, DuCange’s Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, parts of Migne’s Patrologia Latina, and many others.

Digital Monumenta Germaniae Historica

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica has been the source of some of the most authoritative editions of Latin sources on the medieval period. This site makes available the full texts of all its series, including the most recently published volumes. It is somewhat cumbersome to print these texts but the database is searchable.

Online Manuscripts and Exhibitions

The following  represents only a small selection of websites that offer free digital access to original Medieval and/or Renaissance documents. At this time, there are many libraries that have at least some of their manuscript holdings digitalized.

Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Expositions Virtuelles

For those able to understand relatively straightforward French, the Bibliothèque Nationale offers a series of audio-visual exhibitions on topics of interest to MARS students, including, among others, Carolingian manuscripts, cartography, bestiaries, medieval gastronomy, and the Torah, Christian Bible, and Qur’an.

The British Library: Online Gallery (This link temporarily unavailable due to BL security upgrade process)

Includes substantial commentary on, and zoom-able image excerpts from, some of the library’s most famous manuscripts, including the Lindisfarne Gospels, Luttrell Psalter, Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an, the Lisbon Hebrew Bible, and Sforza Hours.

The British Library: “Treasures in Full” (This link temporarily unavailable due to BL security upgrade process)

Full digital image facsimiles with commentary of the Magna Carta, Gutenberg Bibles, Shakespeare quartos and more.

HMML (Hill Museum and Manuscript Library)

HMML is an institution dedicated to the preservation of the world’s manuscript heritage. Founded in the 1960s to microfilm European manuscript collections, they have expanded their work and collaborations to include collections from Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and South Asia. Digitalized materials are available free through their collections webpages where users can create a Digital Reading room.

The Digital Scriptorium

The Digital Scriptorium is an image database of images from medieval and renaissance manuscripts from a large number of institutions, all with substantial information.

Early Manuscripts at Oxford University

Full digital facsimiles of over eighty manuscripts from seven different Oxford libraries.

The Utrecht Psalter

This Dutch site offers a complete online digital facsimile of the famous Utrecht Psalter, an extensively illustrated Carolingian manuscript, including detailed commentary available in English and both Latin transcription and English translation of the text itself.