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A New Charter from the Fourth Crusade
Almost ten years ago, during my doctoral research, I was rifling through boxes at the Archives nationales in Paris for the first time. Guided by preliminary references I had found in notes kindly provided by Prof. Nicholas Vincent, I was mining a very rich seam through the Ordre de Malte section of the S series. It was there that I stumbled across an undated and unpublished charter that seemed to have inspired no comment in any of my secondary reading (pictured above). Its anonymity may seem natural enough: it records a donation to the Knights Templar made by a father and son—Hugh and Odo of Essonne, otherwise unknown—of the census from some vague ‘land of ours closest and nearest to [the order’s] mills’ on the island of Saussay (between modern Itteville and Ballancourt, Essonne).
The rather flashy red silk cords and surviving green wax seal caught my eye, however, and I froze upon reading the witness list. As a first-year doctoral student, the novelty of handling medieval parchment was still quite fresh, and that electric feeling of connexion with the past found in archives has never left me. But this scrap of skin and ink promised to be particularly special. In addition to Simon of Montfort, the subject of my doctoral thesis, those present at the grant included the Cistercian abbots of Vaux-de-Cernay and Cercanceaux, Robert Mauvoisin, Gerard of Fournival, and the Templars William of Chartres and Robert of Chamville. The abbots had not only been among those white monks deputed to recruit and accompany the Fourth Crusade (1198-1204), but, along with Simon of Montfort and Robert Mauvoisin, opposed the crusade’s diversion to attack Christian cities such as Zara on the Dalmatian coast, finally leaving together for Syria in 1203 while most of the army sailed to its infamous destiny at Constantinople. Gerard of Fournival had no connexion with this group, but was a Third Crusade veteran and Plantagenet courtier who made an independent second voyage to Outremer in 1204. William of Chartres would become master of the Temple in 1210, while Robert of Chamville is noted in the charter as ‘commander of the Temple of Acre’, a position he held until sometime before 1207.
Here was, then, an original charter that had almost certainly been drafted in the Holy Land during the Fourth Crusade, between mid-1204 (the arrival of Gerard of Fournival) and autumn 1205 (the latest possible departure of Simon of Montfort). Subsequent searching on my part yielded only four other such surviving charters. This fifth example was brought to the commandery of Chalou-la-Reine (modern Chalou-Moulineaux, Essonne), either by the donors or by Templars returning to France from business or service in Acre. After the suppression of the order in 1312, the Knights Hospitaller took over the commandery, and the charter was eventually deposited in the archives of the commandery of Le Saussay itself, erected in 1356. It would remain there until the suppression of all religious orders during the French Revolution and the national confiscation of their possessions, at which point the document was introduced to its present home in the Archives nationales.
In addition to its rarity, this charter also reveals a good deal about diplomatic practices among the Templars in Acre at the turn of the thirteenth century, as well as the history of the dissenters from the Fourth Crusade. Among the first things to note are the physical elements of the charter that first arrested my attention: the red cords and green wax.
Seals were ordinarily attached with simple parchment or leather queues and cast in uncoloured brown wax. Cords made of dyed fibres such as those attached to the Essonne charter (left) or to a contemporary confirmation by papal legates of a dying crusader’s grant to the Templars (right) demonstrate status, while green wax emphasises the importance and perpetual significance of the document it seals.
These materials, likely along with the professional scribe who so neatly composed the charter, were almost certainly provided to Hugh and Odo by the Templars in Acre, suggesting a ‘luxury service’ for those crusaders who wished to extend the benefits of their experience in Outremer by endowing the order with property in the West. That the Templars in Acre were willing to lay out the red carpet even for donations as modest as that of the Essonnes is indicative not only of the Knights’ wealth, but also of an indiscriminate approach to property acquisition.
Closer inspection of the text, particularly of the witness list, yields a number of other conclusions. A distinction made between the witnesses—the abbot of Cercanceaux, Simon of Montfort, and Gerard of Fournival—and the Templars ‘in [whose] presence’ the grant was made sheds light on the purpose of such observers. While the witnesses are described as such in the present tense (testes sunt), the attendance of William of Chartres and Robert of Chamville is in the perfect (fuit factum); Robert’s office as commander is furthermore given an imperfect qualifier (tunc erat). A nearly identical diplomatic formula in a Champenois charter of 1201 (surviving in a vidimus, below) attests the presence of Templars at a grant made in Acre but only recorded once the crusader donor returned home.
Here, however, a distinction is made between the witnesses of the ‘fact’ or ‘matter’ (res) of the donation, and the ‘gift’ (donum) itself. By contrast, both the witnesses of the Essonne charter and the Templars are associated with the actual donum of the grant. But while both the crusaders and the Templars attended the Essonne grant, they did not all serve as witnesses. Quite apart from the fact that, as beneficiaries, William and Robert were interested parties, the substance of the gift—the census on the Essonnes’ land—was in France, and neither Templar could be relied upon to return from his active service in Outremer. The true witnesses, however, all expected to make the voyage home, where they could vouch for the authenticity of the Essonnes’ act. The Templars in both Syria and France therefore distinguished between the persistent identity of the witnesses and the temporally limited role of the representatives of the order, who were too distant to be consulted or easily verified.
More indirectly, the conjunction of the abbots of Vaux-de-Cernay and Cercanceaux, Robert Mauvoisin, and Simon of Montfort testifies to the continued cohesion of the group that abandoned the main crusade army over a point of principle in 1203. The continued affinity between Simon, Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay (who had long been a friend of the Montforts), and Robert Mauvoisin through the Albigensian Crusade (1208-1218, Simon’s death) has been much discussed elsewhere; the inclusion of Hugh of Cercanceaux, who, unlike the others, had no connections with the forest of Yveline (south-west of Paris), shows that this association was not derived solely from regional identity. Indeed, the presence of an outsider such as Gerard of Fournival among the witnesses may confirm the importance of shared ideals. Before sailing east, Gerard petitioned for a royal licence to move a weekly market in his Norman lands from Sunday to Thursday, in line with the reforms preached by the Parisian schoolmen linked to Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay and enacted in 1212 by Simon of Montfort in the Statutes of Pamiers, a constitution for his conquests in the Albigensian Crusade. In contrast with the recriminations of Fourth Crusade apologist Geoffrey of Villehardouin, who accused them of wishing ‘to disperse the host’ at their departure from Zara, Simon, Guy, and their companions remained physically and morally united throughout their expedition to the Holy Land.
A decade ago when I discovered this charter, I was principally interested in this last dimension: its value as an independent documentary testimony to Simon of Montfort’s pilgrimage to Outremer. I have, however, continued to come back to this remarkable, if brief, bit of parchment over the years and tried to tease out some of the light it can shed through its peculiarities. I hope these musings have demonstrated its importance, not only as an uncommon survival but also as a window into medieval approaches to documents, particularly in the context of crusading, at the turn of the thirteenth century.
Gregory Lippiatt, Lecturer in Medieval History
Pregnancy Advice from Medieval Preachers
Since I’ve been on maternity leave I’ve not surprisingly been pondering all things to do with pregnancy and baby care. I’ve also been thinking about medieval pregnancy advice, since it’s a topic I’ve touched on during my ongoing research on medieval fertility and infertility.
Medical texts are probably the medieval sources which give most information relating to pregnancy and these works have been studied by many medievalists and early modernists. We hear in these sources about ways to facilitate (or sometimes prevent) conception, see if a woman is pregnant, predict the sex of an unborn child, and reduce the risk of miscarriage, as well as about weird food cravings, childbirth, and more. But medicine was not the only source of advice.
By the later Middle Ages preachers also sometimes commented on conception, pregnancy and baby care, with a view to advising fellow clergy and ultimately – through those clerics’ preaching – laypeople about good and bad behaviour. Their advice was much more limited than that of the medical writers and it hasn’t been well studied. One exception is an article by Peter Biller, published in History Today in 1986 (vol. 36, issue 8). Biller quotes a manual written to educate priests by the fourteenth-century English cleric William of Pagula, which tells priests to advise pregnant women to avoid heavy work. Biller also raises a larger question about whether priests – often the best educated people in their communities – were one channel by which learned medical knowledge relating to pregnancy might reach women. This is something I’d like to look into more, but certainly William was not the only cleric to give advice relating to the health of pregnant women and their unborn children. Three thirteenth-century preachers, Jacques de Vitry, Guibert of Tournai, and Stephen of Bourbon also did so. In addition to preaching themselves, all three put together long collections of sermons and exempla, short moral stories which preachers could use to make moral points in an entertaining way, and scholars have long used these stories as sources for a wide range of aspects of medieval life, including popular belief, marriage, magic, and more.
These stories often focus on the dire consequences of bad behaviour, as a dramatic way of making the point that certain activities were sinful. Thus in the case of pregnancy they tend to emphasize the safety of the unborn child, but when they do so their purpose is often to make wider points about correct behaviour in marriage. Thus Jacques includes in a sermon on marriage an exemplum about a man who hit his pregnant wife while he was drunk, causing her to miscarry (Sermones ad status, Paris, BN MS lat. 17609, f. 134r). Jacques included this story in order in order to stress the evils of marital discord and show how alcohol could make this worse, but there is also a message here about the appropriate treatment of pregnant women, as an especially vulnerable group.
Another topic that interested both preachers was sex in pregnancy. As scholars such as Dyan Elliott have shown this topic was debated by theologians, because it offered a case study for discussing the acceptable limits of sexual activity within marriage. Both Jacques and Guibert (quoting Jacques’ story) criticised men who insisted on having sex with their wives in late pregnancy. According to Jacques:
‘I have heard of certain men who harassed their pregnant wives, who were close to giving birth, because they did not wish to abstain for a moderate amount of time. Nor did they spare the pregnant women, because the child was killed in its mother’s womb and deprived of baptism. This lust is cursed, which denies God the soul of his child.’ (BN MS lat. 17509, f. 135v)
But both Jacques and Stephen of Bourbon also give happier information about cravings in pregnancy. They take it for granted that the audience will know of these and so they use them as a way of illustrating an unrelated point about prayer. People who dislike praying, Stephen says, are ‘like a pregnant woman who is disgusted by sweet things and loves to taste bitter things.’
These comments are patchy and without more research it’s not clear what they add up to, but they do show that medieval preachers were willing to discuss pregnancy and give advice and information. It’s also interesting that much of that advice focuses on men’s behaviour (at least in the case of men who behaved very badly towards pregnant wives) rather than women’s. At any rate there is more here to investigate.
Catherine Rider, Associate Professor in Medieval History
Starting an Inquisition Database Project
I’m at the beginning of a new project on ‘Popular Healing: Christian and Islamic Practices and the Roman Inquisition in Early Modern Malta’ (not medieval, but you can’t have everything), funded by a British Academy Small Grant. It’s a joint project, conducted by me and Dionisius Agius, in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter, as co-investigators. It also builds on Dionisius’s earlier ‘Magic in Malta, 1605’ project, on which I was co-investigator. I’ve written about ‘Magic in Malta’ on the blog before here and here but to sum up that earlier project examined in depth one unusual, and interesting, trial held by the Roman Inquisition in Malta. In this trial a Muslim slave, Sellem bin al-Sheikh Mansur, was tried for several counts of doing magic and divination for Christians. The project book should be out next year.
This time round, we’re hoping to answer some of the questions which the ‘Magic in Malta’ project raised for us by looking at a wider range of inquisitorial cases. In particular, it became clear that Sellem’s case was part of a much wider world of interactions taking place on Malta between the Christian majority and the substantial minority of Muslim slaves living on the islands. Many of these interactions seemed to be related to illness and healing. In particular, some Muslim slaves, like Sellem, were being accused of offering what the inquisitors deemed ‘superstitious’ or ‘magical’ ‘remedies’ to Christians – practices designed to cure illnesses, diagnose and counter witchcraft, and create or strengthen sexual relationships through love magic. Often this was a way for the slaves to earn some extra income. It was not only Muslim slaves who offered these services, however. Christian healers, both men and women, were also being accused of using magical or superstitious practices.
Our plan for the project is to compile a simple database of cases, in order to investigate this world of popular remedies in more detail. How many cases do we see, and what are the patterns of change over time? Are there differences in the services that were said to have been offered by these different healers – Christian or Muslim, male or female? How were these different healers perceived by clients, and how did the Inquisition treat them? Did clients seek out ‘magical’ remedies for particular types of illness or problem? Why did they seek out particular healers? Inquisition records are not unproblematic windows onto these questions, of course. Witnesses rarely came forward spontaneously (often they were sent by their parish priests after mentioning superstitious practices in confession), and they were often keen to present their actions in the least incriminating light. Moreover, as many scholars have shown, witness testimonies in inquisitorial records were shaped in numerous ways by what witnesses believed the inquisitors were expecting to hear, as well as by the (sometimes leading) questions asked of them. Nonetheless, the wealth of circumstantial detail in the records allows us to explore perceptions of superstitious remedies and the interactions between healers and their clients.
It’s early days yet. Our first research trip to the Cathedral Archives in Mdina is a couple of weeks away. We’re currently setting up our database, with the advice of Exeter’s Digital Humanities team, which is a bit of a learning curve for two academics without much prior experience of Microsoft Access. It’s a smallish project, with a more restricted focus than, say, the Dissident Networks Project recently begun at the Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, which also makes use of databases for Inquisition records, among other things – but we think the results will be interesting.
More at a later date on how it goes.
Catherine Rider, Associate Professor in Medieval History
More Leeds Sessions – Fertility and Infertility
Inspired by Levi’s call for Leeds and Kalamazoo papers on the blog a few weeks ago I thought I’d post one of my own for Leeds 2019…
I’m currently in the process of putting together a session (or two, if there’s a lot of interest) on Fertility and Infertility for next year’s International Medieval Congress at Leeds. I’ve been working on a long-term project on medieval attitudes to infertility for some time, and have written about it on the blog before. Infertility and childlessness crop up in a wide range of medieval texts and my sense, from discussing the subject informally with other medievalists over several years, is that quite a few people are now working on this and related topics from a variety of angles, building on what is now a large and sophisticated body of work from historians of medicine in particular. It would be nice to bring some of these scholars together and think about future directions for the field.
So, if you’re working on medieval fertility/infertility/reproduction related topics and would be interested in giving a paper, please get in touch with me by 15th September – c.r.rider@exeter.ac.uk. Papers that approach the subject from any angle or source base are welcome, and could include people working on history of medicine, literature, demography, marriage, etc. And if you are more organized than me and have already made your Leeds plans but would be willing to chair a session, please also get in touch.
Catherine Rider, Associate Professor in Medieval History
Researching with the Exeter Cathedral Library & Archives: Making a Student’s Guide
In June and July 2018, Julia Hopkin, an MA student in experimental archaeology at Exeter, spent some time in Exeter Cathedral Library and Archives, funded by the university as part of the College of Humanities’ student internship scheme. Her job was to create a guide for students (at all levels) who might be interested in using the Library and Archives for research. Here she talks about her experience.
We’ll be putting copies of the guide on the module webpages for the History dissertations other modules but otherwise for a copy please contact Catherine Rider (c.r.rider@exeter.ac.uk). For more information on the Cathedral Library and Archives see their website.
Most people are completely unaware that Exeter Cathedral has a library or an archives, and to those unfamiliar with it, it might sound like a rather intimidating place, full of dust and uninspiring tomes. These ideas couldn’t be further from my experiences there and in my recent role putting together a guide to the Library and Archives’ collections, my aim was to debunk some of these misconceptions and make the extensive collections as accessible and unintimidating as possible, especially to students who may not have much experience with research outside the university.
The earliest contributions to the library date to the mid eleventh century, with the first books brought to the Cathedral by Bishop Leofric in 1050, and the archival documents have been accumulating from around the same time. Records and acquisitions in both areas are ongoing, and the topics covered by the material are almost bewildering in their scope. This makes them a gold mine for researchers in all sorts of subject areas – from Anglo-Saxon literature to local genealogy, 17th century medicine and medieval land ownership – but something of a daunting prospect for an undergraduate and for anyone (i.e. me!) trying to put together a brief summary of the collections. The L&A staff were as helpful and knowledgeable as always, however, and with their help I managed to find a handful of broad themes that represented the main bulk of the collections while appealing to student interests.
From there it wasn’t difficult to find examples from both the Library and Archive collections to illustrate the wide range of topics represented in the collections. Famous volumes such as the Exeter Book (a unique collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry) and Exon Domesday (a rare survival of local data collected for the Domesday book) were obvious choices, but other types of sources such as photographs, newspaper cuttings, and even the books and Cathedral buildings in themselves, as records of historical craft techniques and heritage conservation, also provide a vast supply of research opportunities. Many sources are also sadly under-investigated and could benefit considerably from research being done on them – the wax seals of bishops, monarchs and dignitaries from around the country attached to early charters being a particularly promising example.
I also made an effort to emphasise that there really might be something for everyone at the Cathedral and to highlight sources that people might not expect. Students primarily interested in international history might assume there was little for them, but when the library includes a whole range of bibles translated into Native American languages, relics of 19th century Christian missionary efforts, who knows what other research topics the collections can cater to? To combat the misconception that all historical material is dry and boring, I also included my favourite group of Cathedral sources, the Chapter Act books. Kept continuously from 1385 to the present day, these record Cathedral decisions and payments, often in minute detail. The records vividly illustrate life in the past in all its wonderful mundanity, from the orders of new hymn sheets and repairs to almshouses to the misbehaviour of choristers and organists – such as the fines given to Richard Dickinson, bellringer, who ‘through his own fault’ managed to break some of the Cathedral windows during a funeral in 1619.
As I began my research it became clear that not only was there entirely too much material to create anything more than a very brief guide, but also that introducing students to the process of researching in the Library and Archives was just as important as giving an insight into the collections themselves. Having volunteered there in the past, I was familiar with the peaceful location behind the Cathedral, the wall displays in the entrance hall interpreting the history of the Library and Archives and some of its treasures, and the quiet, book-lined reading room, but introducing it for other students has helped me to appreciate it in a new light. I suddenly noticed features like the wheelchair ramp and the browsing mode of the online catalogue, as well as all the potential research opportunities that appeared when I started looking at them from the perspective of other researchers coming for the first time. Describing the process of making an enquiry and trying to emphasise how welcoming and knowledgeable the staff are has made me realize how lucky we are as Exeter students and residents to have such an amazing resource freely available to all of us and right on our doorstep.
I hope that the guide will make the Library and Archives’ material more widely used by Exeter students. There is a huge amount of material that could not only really enhance student’s work, but also would benefit from more attention and research work done with it. There is so much to be gained on both sides and both I and the Library and Archives’ staff would be delighted if even a handful of students turned their interest and expertise to these collections. This has been an extremely rewarding project for me, and I hope it continues to be of value to others for the years to come.
Julia Hopkin, MA Experimental Archaeology
The Devon and Exeter Institution and its Medieval Resources
Last July Cheryl Cooper, who had just completed a History degree at Exeter, did a student internship (funded by the College of Humanities and the Widening Participation scheme) looking at resources for medieval research in the Devon and Exeter Institution. She sums up her findings here. Now that we’re gearing up for the new academic year it might particularly interest returning undergraduates and MA students who are thinking about possible dissertation topics. For Exeter students and staff, Cheryl’s full report will shortly be put on the undergraduate and MA history dissertation ELE sites.
The DEI is one of Exeter’s hidden gems. A perfect paradise of calm and tranquillity for writers, historians and anyone looking to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Tucked away in the historic centre of Exeter, the DEI, from the outside, looks like many of the quaint buildings in Exeter Cathedral quarter, boasting beautiful cathedral views but you would be remiss to believe that this is where the magnificence of the DEI ends. The real treasures of the DEI are located just behind the historic front doors. Founded in 1813 for ‘promoting the general diffusion of Science, Literature and the Arts, and for illustrating the natural and Civil History of the county of Devon and the History of the City of Exeter’, the DEI holds over thirty-thousand volumes and thousands of maps, prints and pamphlets and continues to be a ‘living library’ in which new acquisitions continue to be sourced. Students of Exeter University are automatically eligible for membership of the DEI for the duration of their degree, but unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) the DEI is a place that stays undiscovered for many students at Exeter. This may be partly due to the fact that many students, myself included, were/are unaware they are members of this hidden gem. As well as boasting a rather grand and peaceful reading room there are a number of study desks located in the library itself. The DEI makes a welcome change to the hustle and bustle of the campus library, and whether you choose to study in the library itself or in the reading room under the shadow of the cathedral, you will not be disappointed spending a few hours in this beautiful building – in fact as historians, the environment may even add some extra flair to your historical writing, as it certainly transported me back a few decades!
Medieval Resources at the DEI
Last July I was delighted to accept an internship with Exeter University cataloguing the medieval material held at the DEI – rifling through old books in a beautiful historic building did not seem like a bad way to spend a few weeks of my summer. The aim of the role was to try and get a clearer idea of what medieval materials the DEI possessed and to organize and present my findings in a way that would be useful for medievalists. Professor Henry French and Dr Catherine Rider had informed me at interview stage that to date, there was no comprehensive list of medieval materials held at the DEI so there was no way of knowing how long this task would take. It was a case of digging through the materials and finding a way of making it accessible to future researchers. I found this an exciting prospect, if not a little daunting. It was a project which I could fully co-ordinate and organise myself and one in which no one was sure what I might find hidden in the depths of the DEI. Of course as an historian the dream of finding a rare, undiscovered manuscript, hiding, untouched on a dusty shelf was never far away. Alas, this did not happen, but I did discover that the DEI holds a wealth of resources for medievalists, in particular for those wanting to research the history of the local area and contemporary views on medieval life.
The DEI (for those yet to visit) consists of two large rooms downstairs (The Inner Library and The Outer Library) and the Gallery situated upstairs. With over thirty-thousand volumes held within these rooms it was almost impossible to know where to begin. However, for this I must thank Paul and Derek from the DEI library team, who sat with me and explained how the library catalogue worked, where the most likely places to find medieval resources were and certain books of interest. Without their help I think I may have been unintentionally trapped in the DEI forever examining each book in turn! With their advice, as well as help and advice from Dr Catherine Rider, I identified the following categories as areas of interest: the Rolls Series, Local History, Wider Local History, Royal History and General History. These five areas are the ones which are covered in the most depth in my catalogue. The aim is to help medievalists who are researching the local area and students who are embarking on a research project and who want to use this local collection of sources.
Working through the areas identified produced a surprisingly large amount of medieval material; so much so, that it was impossible within this internship to list every individual resource. The catalogue produced is intended to give the researcher an idea of what type of material is held in each category and list examples from each. I have also included material that I found to be the most interesting, for example The Alchemical Testament of John Gybbys, translated from a 1423 ms held at the Bodleian Library and a wardrobe account from Edward I. I have tried to select a wide range of material to showcase just how useful the DEI library can be to medievalists.
This project has highlighted the medieval resources held at the DEI and has hopefully catalogued them in way which proves useful for medievalists. I would highly recommend the DEI as a place to study for Exeter students and hopefully this guide will show that it holds potential for medieval researchers. There are still areas yet to be covered in the hunt for medieval material, so who knows that medieval manuscript or unpublished source may be hiding in the DEI waiting for you to find it! Happy researching!
Cheryl Cooper, BA History Graduate and MA Student, University of Exeter
Digital Resources for Medieval Research and Teaching
There has been a huge proliferation of online resources for research and teaching in Medieval Studies in recent years, so much so that it’s hard to keep track of them all. So we’ve put our heads together and come up with a list of some of our favourites – though this is by no means exhaustive. We hope this will be useful to people researching at all levels but it may come in particularly handy for our second-year undergraduates, who are beginning to think about dissertation topics at this time of year, and for our MA students who are getting started on their dissertation research in earnest.
General Reference for a wide variety of topics and periods:
The Internet Medieval Sourcebook, a large (if slightly patchy) archive of translated sources; some are full texts, others extracts.
The International Medieval Bibliography (provided by Brepols, access through the Uni e-library search engine); MLA Bibliography (access ditto) – these are the two main resources for finding research that’s been produced on a topic. The latter is specific to Modern Languages research, the former is Medieval Studies.
Online dictionaries – for French, the Anglo-Norman Dictionary and the DEAF (Dictionnaire électronique d’ancien français available in French or German only) are the best. For Latin, the DMLBS (Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources as well as the online Lewis and Short. For English, the Middle English Dictionary (MED).
British History online is very useful for following up charters, roll entries, etc. The search facility is quite good as it has a wild card option, though you will need to anticipate the variant forms of a name in order to find everything relevant.
In French, but covering primary material in various languages including Latin, is arlima.net (Archives de literature du moyen âge). A good place to start when looking for lists of manuscripts of a particular work, basic information e.g. about authorship and length, or bibliographical suggestions. The completeness of entries is rather uneven (some are excellent, some are basically shells) but it is being updated all the time.
http://www.medievalarchaeology.co.uk/ Portal for Europe’s foremost society for the study of medieval archaeology; contains many useful links.
Pastscape: Online database for the historic environment in England and a key starting point for the study of any medieval site or building.
Digimap allows users to find and download Ordnance Survey maps of any date and scale; invaluable for researching medieval landscapes, sites and settlements and depicting them.
More specific sites that we like, in no particular order:
http://www.esawyer.org.uk/about/index.html and http://dk.usertest.mws3.csx.cam.ac.uk/ for Anglo-Saxon charters. The former provides texts of (almost) all Anglo-Saxon charters as well as summaries of modern scholarly commentary, alongside full details of all surviving manuscripts etc., whilst the latter is something of a companion site, which for those signed up provides images of almost all surviving single sheets, along with maps and other useful materials for teaching (and studying) Anglo-Saxon England.
The Monastic Manuscript Project site, especially the page containing a list of links to archives and libraries with digitized medieval holdings It’s presented as a resource for the study of early medieval monasticism, but, really, it’s of use to anyone working on medieval manuscripts.
Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. An outstanding digital edition of an invaluable primary source for medieval political history.
Wellcome Images: database of images from the collections of the Wellcome Library in London. Invaluable for studying the history of medicine (European and worldwide) but also much on manuscripts, religion, science and more. The Library also runs a blog, with some good medieval content.
Thesaurus Exemplorum Medii Aevi – database of stories and motifs in medieval exempla, useful for finding references to particular topics or establishing which authors tell which stories. A French site but it provides some English keywords for searching.
Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France is one of the most significant recent digital projects in medieval literary studies – it explores the transmission and mobility of Francophone literature across Europe via a database of the manuscripts of six important textual traditions, including Classical material (romances of Alexander and Troy, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César) and Arthurian romance (Lancelot, Tristan).
Finally, for information on French-language and Occitan-language material specifically, Jonas, the ‘Repertoire des texts et des manuscrits médiévaux doc et d’oïl’. Again, this is a resource which is improving all the time, and aims for exhaustivity.
Thanks to Helen Birkett (History), Oliver Creighton (Archaeology), Tom Hinton (Modern Languages), Elliot Kendall (English) and Levi Roach (History) for suggesting their favourite websites.
Catherine Rider (History)
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