Too many cool manuscripts to even list...

[jducoeur]

... so here's the pointer to the whole shebang. From the Laurel's list, I just got the pointer to the Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts, surely the most screamingly useful website ever.

It's exactly what it sounds like: just an index of (apparently) all the period MSS that have been fully digitized and put online -- over 1300 of them. You can slice and dice them by location, language, whatever, but I'm having fun simply browsing the title list. Just a few of the gems I've noticed so far:

• A 15th century French introduction to Cabala;


• The Jeu de Robin et Marion -- apparently a song-story from the Robin Hood cycle;


• Le Livre des Eschec Morales -- which, unless I miss my guess, is probably the French original for the chess book that was the first thing Caxton printed in English;


• An interactive Flash digitization of the Magna Carta;


• A compilation of books from the Grail Cycle;


• A Haggadah from c. 1300;


• The Snorra Edda (in old Norse);

And so on. A seriously wonderful collection of toys. But it does remind me that I need to get back to my Latin course...

ETA: And while we're at it, here's another collection, albeit tending to be of shorter and more scattered works...

Comments

[felis-lupus.livejournal.com]

Aaaaah! This is fantastic! :)

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Ooo. I might make a font from the chess book...

[jducoeur]

Certainly sounds useful to me...

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

But it does remind me that I need to get back to my Latin course...

Well, yeah, this is an awesome collection, and I have put in some time over the years in familiarizing myself with calligraphic hands, but translating from a nice clean text is enough drama for me. Starting from a manuscript is more work than I'm up for, I think. Props to you if you've got the motivation.

Beautiful stuff to look at, though; I'll say that much.

[jducoeur]

Well, I'm less concerned with being able to translate the whole thing than being able to make heads or tails of it. If I come across a source I passionately care about in its entirety, then it's conceivable that I might do the multi-step process (transcribe/translate/cleanup), but I'm not yet at the point of even being able to really know that...

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Yes. We are (pardon the pun) on the same page.