This guide is designed for students at the M.A. level and focuses on interdisciplinary online resources in Medieval Studies. This is only a starting point and electronic resources should be verified with their print ancestors in many cases.
T‑PEN is a web-based tool for working with images of manuscripts. Users attach transcription data (new or uploaded) to the actual lines of the original manuscript in a simple, flexible interface.
The SharedCanvas data model enables the construction of views by distributed collaborators, by annotating a shared "Canvas" resource which is then rendered using a presentation system. This allows any sort of resource to be included from different servers or repositories, for further annotations such as commentary to be added using the same underlying technologies, and to promote further additions by third parties.
The initial use case for SharedCanvas comes from the medieval manuscript domain, where the view is of a single page constructed potentially from several images from different libraries or museums, as manuscripts are tragically often cut up and physically separated. Many different images of a page may exist, along with a transcriptions, editions and translations of the text. In other cases, the text may be well known but no images are available because the original page has been lost.
Welcome to MESA, a newly formed federation of scholars, projects, institutions, and organizations engaged in digital scholarship within the field of medieval studies. Please check back often as we will be adding new members, exhibitions, and teaching resources.
The Online Froissart offers access to the manuscript tradition of the first three Books of Froissart’s Chronicles. It delivers complete or partial transcriptions of all 113 surviving manuscripts containing these Books, a new translation into modern English providing readers with an accessible way of exploring chapters selected from the first three Books, several complete high-resolution reproductions of illuminated manuscript copies, and a range of secondary materials (codicological descriptions, name/place index, historical commentaries, textual commentaries, scholarly essays, a glossary and some commentaries on the illustrations). The Online Froissart also provides a number of advanced tools with which to unlock the riches of the resource. These include a collation tool allowing word-by-word comparisons, a search engine for simple and complex queries, a transcription viewing mode allowing users to go straight to definition entries.
A multisensory work of the past is explored through multimedia technologies of the present. Completed in 1510 for the parish of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg, this large-format gradual preserves the mass liturgy that was sung by choir boys until the Reformation was introduced in 1525. Provocative and satirical illuminations include the one from which the book takes its name. Many medieval manuscripts are too valuable and vulnerable to be handled.