Gould Library
Carleton College’s Gould Library offers a variety of helpful resources for MARS students.
- Sarah Calhoun, the Medieval and Renaissance Studies’ research librarian liaison, is available to consult with students. Visit Sarah’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 Rebecca Bramlett, 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 Special Collections.
- We will soon have an online search tool to explore our collection.
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 a 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. Please click the titles to link to these pages.
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
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”
Full digital image facsimiles with commentary of the Magna Carta, Gutenberg Bibles, Shakespeare quartos and more.
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.