General Medieval History Resources
This is a rather miscellaneous category, but then, so is medieval studies. It does seem that people are not putting up web pages on what one might call old fashioned history; the history of the Black Death, the history of the Hundred Years War - that sort of thing. What is appearing is a miscellany of resources for students of history to use. Here is a selection that might be useful or interesting. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but represents the range of types of website that can be put to use in various ways.
This is a huge resource site for anybody studying anything about the medieval church. Some pages consist largely of bibliographies, others have their own text. Definitely worth investigating.
This site is produced by the Institute of Historical research and the History of Parliament Trust, and contains various resources, of which the most exciting for those into general historical research is a selection of volumes of the famous, and still incomplete Victoria County History. It is set up in a database driven and well indexed format with very plain, and perhaps a trifle difficult to read, formatting. Keep on coding there guys, this is a resource we can all use!
This venerable and absolutely essential compilation of sources for all historians of matters British is steadily being placed online for all to use. A huge resource at your fingertips.
A handy first reference point for anything to do with the Catholic church or religion. The articles are brief, but authoritative, and provide references for further reading. There is a functioning search facility. It might just get you started. Be aware that this is a much older edition of the encyclopedia than the latest in print, and attitudes to some issues are a trifle 1916. Nevertheless, if you are trying to identify a saint or find out what the litany is, the information is here.
This site grew rapidly to become a valuable data source for many aspects of the early and medieval Christian church, with articles, primary source material and art works represented. It is now no longer being updated. Its own material is still of great value, but any external links which have not been deleted are likely to be a bit dodgy. Use as a resource, not as a web finding aid.
The Society for Medieval Military History
This is a very plain vanilla academic web site with an enormous range and quantity of primary source material on medieval military history, and given what a pugnacious lot they were in those days, that is a lot of historical material. The navigation problems that used to exist on the site appeared to have been resolved by removing all navigation aids altogether from internal pages. Just keep using your Back button to get back to the index page.
This is an online version of an academic journal, Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, which has a theme for each volume. It is plain vanilla text with footnotes, and it is currently FREE for all Web users. There is a comprehensive set of back issues available for your perusal. A handy free resource.
This is a journal published in plain vanilla format specialising in the rapid publication of book reviews of medieval interest. It is freely available, with back issues to 1993. It is possible to subscribe to get reviews sent by email as well, and these arrive more quickly than they are put on the website. A useful way of keeping up with recent publications.
This site provides electronic access to back issues of scholarly journals of the traditional paper kind. Depending on the journal, all issues up to 3 to 5 years ago are freely available. The journal of particular interest to medievalists available from this site is Speculum. The contents of journals can be accessed through search or browse facilities. Note that you cannot access this site from home without a subscription, but it is freely available on computers within institutions which have an institutional subscription. Great idea, isn't it?
Anistoriton is a purely electronic journal of history, archaeology and art history from Greece. That is to say, the journal comes from Greece but the content is more generalised. It is aimed at bringing material from professional historians to interested general readers or undergraduates. Information appears in a range of formats from articles to email messages and covers general articles, primary source material and exhibitions. The presentation is fairly basic, but a hint that this may be something of a grassroots venture is that the back issues are housed on GeoCities.
Medieval Women and Gender Index, formerly Medieval Feminist Index
This is not one of your multimedia blockbuster epics, but it is a useful bibliographical research tool. Use a simple database entry form to acquire bibliographical references which you then toddle off and read in a library somewhere. Check out their subject list for inspiration. It starts with "abbesses" and "abducted children" and goes through all manner of amazing things. Not complete, even to their own specifications, but growing.
A collection of resources for the study of women's religious communities, 500-1500
This site has the potential to be a highly valuable academic resource. It is based around a database of information on female religious communities. A recent name change and simplification of the URL has accompanied some progress on the site in terms of content and style.
Foundation for Medieval Genealogy
A major reason for people to become interested in history is the present fascination for genealogy and family history. Consequently, resources are appearing directed at their needs, but these may contain material useful to anyone engaging in some historical research. This site is produced by a registered charity promoting rigorous genealogical research, and has various online resources.
Some Notes on Medieval English Genealogy
Aiming at the same market, this is a very useful plain English guide and resource site for the investigation of medieval English documents. Their section on dating and chronology provides a good basic guide and links to various practical online resources. The grumpy medievalist of the family has pointed out that these are all in standard publications, but now you don't have to go down to the library to look them up.
Arts and Humanities Data Service
This is representative of some new trends in online information, as data collections are made available for researchers in database formats. There may be conditions on access to specific collections. This particular archive seems to be in early days yet, and some categories are eagerly awaiting some content, but it may represent a way of carrying out research in the future. Note that information stored on the web in sites with server-side scripting or database technology is not accessible to search engines such as Google. You have to know where the sources are.
This site displays a series of maps of Europe from 1 to 1300 AD. The site is in both French and English. You can zoom in on sections of each map and the images are of excellent quality. A very useful resource.
The
Medieval Sourcebook: Maps and Images
This section of The Medieval Sourcebook contains maps scanned from out of copyright atlases which have not been optimised for computer display, so they are a bit less than useful. Great idea, needs more work.
Have you ever wanted to know when Easter fell in 1378, or the date of the feast of St Stephen, or what year was the 12th year of the reign of Henry III? This site allows you to answer all those sorts of questions on medieval dates. There is not much to see, just a simple query form. Submit your query, it checks out the database and gives you an answer. Not visually exciting, but very useful. As the authors, and old grumpyboots the medievalist, have pointed out, it is just an electronic manifestation of Cheney's Handbook of Dates, but with two medievalists and one old disintegrating handbook in the one house, it has its uses, and it beats running to the library every time you need a fragment of information.
This calendar program generates a medieval calendar in graphic format showing the days of the week, feast days, Roman dating, Golden Number and Dominical Letter from your entry of a year and a month. Very handy.
A converter which takes a date either in modern format or kalens, nones, ides format and converts it into a range of medieval forms. Unfortunately it doesn't work the other way. It shows variations on the calendar used at different times and in different places.
For the technically minded, this site explains the procedure for dating Easter from 326 to 4099 AD, with a little history of how Easter dating methods evolved. It is produced by the Astronomical Society of South Australia. Who says medieval history and rocket science don't mix?
Secrets
of the Norman Invasion
OK, so this is a quirky. I have included it to show how an individual who is not an academic or tied to an institution can present a historical case on the web, togther with much primary source evidence, which is then available for evaluation by others. Did William the Conqueror's army land at Pevensey, or somewhere else? The grungy site design belies the author's passion for his cause. The modern political side of the story has a trick ending.
This one is rather the counterpoint to the above, where highly conventional historical interpretations are presented in cut and dried form in a site with lovingly prepared but rather horrible medieval fantasy page design. It is worth a look, particulary the discussion section where the author of the site above goes head to head with him. There are galleries of fascinating photographs.
This site has developed from a series of fairly plain text pages with short articles about technological developments in the middle ages, with references given for further reading. For example, there is a discussion of the famous stirrup controversy. It now has some visual material, and links to relevant external sites. I bet you didn't know that Chrétien de Troyes described a rat trap!
This is not so much a website as a collection of websites. Since the site has been slimmed down a bit, most of them have something to do with medieval cookery. There is also a large links section. If you have any interest in medieval food, whether cooking it, eating it or developing elaborate academic theories about it, you could do worse than starting your researches here.
The
Richard III Society Homepage
The Richard III Society are a group of serious historians - on a mission. You don't have to be a Yorkist to make use of this site, but it helps. There are links to useful source material, but don't mention the little princes! If you click on the Barley Hall link you get an excellent and detailed virtual tour of this fine restored late medieval house in York.
This was included to show that even the most simple of link pages, with the most abominable design, can still be very useful. Sadly, it no longer displays animated gifs of waving daisies or plays a midi version of Bridge over Troubled Water, but it will still get you to some fascinating sites about the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostella. It is now part of a larger site called ...
This is also simply a link site about pilgrimage in general, and would be a good thing if more of the links were accurate and up to date.
A simple text page of links to web resources under various topic headings. Useful finding aid if that is what you are into. It seems to be frequently unavailable, but keeps turning up again.
A poet has put this site up to publicise his self-published poem on Joan of Arc, and in the process has assembled a quite comprehensive list of web resources on the subject, including the now increasing category of whole books available for free download. Whatever you might think of the poetry, the selection of material is extensive and shows that people with all manner of interests are helping to order the chaotic structure of the web.
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