Cool Medieval Links for the Serious Student

Greetings! If you are interested in tracking down various sources, resources, and information regarding the medieval world and modern scholarship thereof, you might be interested in the following links (with my own somewhat trenchant commentary). More links will follow at a later time...

The Internet Medieval Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html

This has long been the standard beginner's sourcebook for things medieval, and is the brainchild of Paul Halsall at Fordham University. All in all, I feel that the site is not as useful as it once was--due to copyright issues, many entries are simply bibliographic notes, not links to content. Also, since Halsall is also editing ORB's content, a number of the working links take you to ORB anyway. For all that, the IMS remains a fairly useful tool if you are looking for a random source. Great for undergraduates.

The Crusades Encylopedia. http://crusades-encyclopedia.com/

A newer site, maintained by Andrew Holt. It is far from complete, given the scope of the subject, but new material is added fairly regularly. The primary and secondary source collections are very useful indeed, as are the links to scholarly opinion pieces about the crusades, book reviews, movie reviews, and so on. In the primary sources section, there are links for the ENTIRE French series, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, in PDF files (obviously, I am excited about this...). Good resources for the Albigensian Crusade. This site has saved my students several times, and is an ever-improving resource for scholars.


The Labyrinth at Georgetown. http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu/

This is the new and improved Labyrinth--in other words, most of the links work on this new edition (though hardly all, so be warned). Unfortunately, Georgetown has elected to keep the unwieldy search format, which takes some getting used to, and the results of one's search can be highly uneven. On the other hand, the Labyrinth occasionally has links to obscure but very useful scholarly sites, so it is always worth checking in your research.


The ORB: Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies. http://www.the-orb.net/

I have mixed feelings about The ORB, mostly because my students have tried using the useful summaries and lecture plans as substitutes for reading genuine scholarly work...On the other hand, The ORB does have a fairly impressive collection of primary source materials and general resources--for instance, the only English version which I have found of the Teutonic Knight's "Rule", and a critical one at that (this could well be because I haven't looked hard enough, but still...). Definitely worth exploring...


Some paleography?

Anglo-Norman Paleography. http://paleo.anglo-norman.org/

The site describes itself as "a collaborative venture between the West Sussex Record Office and the Department of English Local History." It contains a good deal of information on Anglo-Norman paleography, a fairly comprehensive bibliography, exercises and self-testing, and much basic information about this important sub-category of medieval studies. It appears to have been designed for a specific university course, and for use with a cd--so, don't be surprised if its content appears choppy and incomplete. Not for the faint of heart!


The Vatican School of Paleography, etc. http://asv.vatican.va/en/scuol/1_directors.htm

This would be more useful if the Vatican Archives hadn't decided to close for a few years for (admittedly important) building repairs...So, the information on this site is a) almost certainly not applicable right now, and b) quite possibly out of date. Nevertheless, it's not a bad thing to tuck this website away for future reference


Latin dictionaries

"Words" by William Whitaker. http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe
Latin-English Dictionary Program. http://users.erols.com/whitaker/words.htm

Notre Dame's Latin dictionary recommends Whitaker's "Words" as a more comprehensive program, and thankfully he has provided it free of charge as a downloadable file (second link). The program is little short of amazing, for example providing you with a complete parsing of verbs--first person singular, present indicative active (not in that order!). I have come across only a handful of words absent from its inventory. Great stuff.


Orbis Latinus, by J. G. Th. Graesse. http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/Graesse/contents.html

Karen Green at Columbia has digitalized this old (1909) copy of Graesse's Latin place-name dictionary--indispensable stuff, and something which they don't really teach you (probably because they can't). Place names are often NOT intuitive: for instance, while "Regensburg" and "Ratisbonensis" sound fairly similar, you wouldn't guess that "Wuerzburg" is "Herbipolensis" in Latin...would you? This old edition is not exhaustive, and occasionally makes it difficult to find an entry due to spelling variations, but is still an outstandingly useful resource.



And, for those of you who read German...

Mediaevum. http://www.mediaevum.de/

This is a web portal to all things medieval in German scholarship, including information on most (if not all) medieval academic programs in Germany, a manuscript locater for over 65,000 manuscripts in German archives, links to digitalized manuscripts (more on those in another post), dictionaries, and just about any random scholarly information you can think of. The English version does not have much content, and if you want to get anything out of the site be prepared to click around, dust off your German, and enjoy!