Literature and Documentary Sources
There is really quite an amazing array of medieval textual material, either literary or in the form of historic documents, displayed on the web. Some sites act mainly as link pages to help you find stuff scattered all over the place. Other sites have placed an array of materials on their own server. Then there are sites which have developed complex projects around a single author or work. This is by no means a comprehensive listing, but it points to a range of resources which will get you into the system. While much of the material is presented in simple text files, most of the sites in the Special Projects section are complex and multifacetted resources, covering much more than the core text. They show what can be done with a web site.
General or Link Sites (down to Specific Projects)
ORB:
On-Line Text Materials for Medieval Studies
This has been a major resource for medieval textual material on the web, but unfortunately is no longer being updated or maintained. The large amounts of primary source material and authored articles on the site are still of great value, but links to external resources may no longer be accurate and do not include recent material. Some internal linkage problems have never been fixed. It is unfortunate when a web resource which has been constructed with great effort and time is allowed to simply run down, as web material only works properly with constant maintenance. Nevertheless, much primary source material and secondary discussion can be found here.
Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe
This excellent link site provides access to an ever increasing array of primary source documents for the study of European medieval history, some in the form of text files, and others as digital presentations of original documents. It has been regularly updated in content and presentation, and is an ideal first stop when looking for this type of material.
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.
English Literature Anglo-Saxon and Medieval
A very comprehensive page of links to works of English medieval literature on-line. It also includes reviews, articles and other material relevant to medieval literature. It is part of a larger index for the humanities.
An Electronic Library
This archive of literary texts has transferred its hosting from Kansas to Italy following the travels of its owner. It has been around a long time, starting as very simple plain text files of literary works, and has grown in a slightly disorderly manner to include various literary resources. Worth a try if you know what specific text you are looking for.
A site from Fordham University providing textual source material for medieval studies, based on published material and translations now out of copyright or out of print. It includes maps, images and information about films with medieval themes. A highly useful site, but apparently no longer continually expanding as it once was. Now part of ORB. It is becoming somewhat overtaken by other sites which are displaying complete texts of works rather than simply excerpts.
The Online Medieval
and Classical Library
For Berkeley, a site giving direct access to literary texts online. These include sagas, The Song of Roland, various texts by Chaucer, John Gower and others. It also has a search facility. Gone is the excuse that the library cannot find its only copy of some obscure medieval text!
The Russell Hope Robbins Library at the University of Rochester has a speciality in Middle English literature and associated fields. This page provides access to a set of Middle English texts, and to useful bibliographies, as well as to The Camelot Project and The Robin Hood Project.
From the Electronic Text Centre, University of Virginia, this is another site with a large selection of medieval literary texts, including the Canterbury Tales, the York Mystery Plays and much more. An advantage of this site is that large texts are divided into sections so that you don't have to download enormous files.
Our own main medieval web site has a much expanded list to that provided here, with links to numerous specialty items. I haven't given myself any stars, but I think it's pretty comprehensive and I try to keep it up to date. All suggestions for inclusion or correction are gratefully received.
Old English Pages
This site is now gone, along with other medieval material from Georgetown University. I include this reference purely to mourn the passing of valuable material from the public web when some circumstance at the hosting institution changes.
Specific Projects (up to General or Link Sites)
Some years ago this offered promises of full Italian and English versions of Boccaccio's Decameron, linked to a range of contextual material on history and social conditions. For a while there you would click on sequences of headings, to be eventually confronted with under construction labels. However it has grown and filled out considerably, offering ever increasing content with good links between images, maps and text. It shows you can actually build a project on the Web. Check it out for social history or black death or town life, as well as for the core text.
The legend of King Arthur is a hearty medieval favourite. This site has been gradually assembled over time to get together all sorts of aspects of the legend, its characters, its historical background and its context. Great fun and growing all the time, with links to many other resources.
This site is a sister project to The Camelot Project on the other great medieval superhero. Read the ballads, learn about the characters, discuss the social significance of the legend and watch the site grow.
This is truly a blockbuster epic, and it all works. It was designed to provide materials for students at Harvard, but is open to all. It includes texts of Chaucer's works in Middle English and modern English, other authors, contextual material, social history and linguistics. Not to be missed if you are doing anything on Chaucer. The hideous black background appears to have been removed from all but the home page, where it remains presumably for sentimental reasons. If you Google Geoffrey Chaucer you will come up with reams of other sites, all with their virtues and values, but this is the granddaddy of them all.
This site has a complete text of Margery's work, with frames for footnotes and modern word forms. There is also a range of contextual material, including some excellent visual material of church architecture and fittings, interestingly presented. Other sections are about medieval life and pilgrimage. I have been told I must not call Margery the most annoying woman of the middle ages, so I shall refrain from doing so. This site is worth serious and leisurely exploration, and is possibly one of the best specialised medieval sites on the web. It shows what can be done.
This is a genuine blockbuster epic from Columbia University with full texts, contextual material, links to many other Dante sites, essays, artworks, you name it. Now I know enough Dante to recognise the quote Abandon every hope, who enter here, but why do they put it at the top of every page of their web site? Makes you feel a bit uneasy really. Never mind, take your courage and your trusty dead poet and venture forth into a wealth of Dante resources. Once again, if you Google Dante you will find much more, but this one set the standard.
ARTFL
Project: Multi-lingual
Bible
This started out as a search form for the Latin Vulgate Bible but has grown into an elaborate site displaying various translations of the Bible which are interlinked. You can search or browse the various editions. Useful for locating and identifying those odd Biblical quotes. There are other Vulgate Bible sites, as well as some for liturgical works, but this was a pioneer.
The
Avalon Project at the Yale Law School:
Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Documents
This has English language text versions of a range of significant medieval legal documents. More useful than beautiful, but a free resource of value.
English
Legal History Materials
This is a fairly ugly plain text website, but it has translations and commentary for some highly significant medieval legal documents. Another useful resource site.
This contains links to texts on pilgrimage and travel, from pre-medieval to modern. Some are on their own site and others are external. A smorgasbord for historical anthropologists!
While this is a plain text version of the famous chronicles, and not the only version on the web, it appears to be the most complete and comprehensive text available there. I speak as one who was vigorously searching for a text containing a description of the Bishop of Norwich's crusade: a sorry little episode excised from the editions by most English editors of sensibility. I include it here to remind searchers that many texts on the web are excerpted rather than complete, so be aware.
The "Confessio" of Saint Patrick
This site has gone. I leave this parting reference as a tribute to the eccentric pioneers of the Web. I wonder if the author ever did find the connection between cybercommunication and the wisdom from ancient texts. And no, I wouldn't bother to try and dredge it up from The Internet Archive, except perhaps for anthropological purposes.
