WEB RESOURCES THAT MIGHT HELP WITH A MEDIEVAL HISTORY PAPER

         Primary sources are among the most helpful Web offerings. See the section on "Source Collections for Medieval History" posted above.  It is ultimately possible that specialized sites offering medieval primary source collections will be outflanked by broader omniverous bibliographical sites offering virtually ALL books, such as Google Books, the Hathi Trust Digital Library, and France's Bibliothèque nationale's Gallica: bibliothèque numérique, from which many medieval source collections and catalogues can now be accessed.  Although advanced historical researchers prefer to use scholarly editions printed in the original languages, or even the original manuscripts themselves or their images, English translations are welcomed by linguistically challenged students. Translations of primary sources are increasingly available on the Web, although often in the form of partial texts and excerpts. The Medieval Sourcebook offers the greatest variety of links to medieval sources in English translation. Some other internet on-line translated texts, many searchable, are listed on the North American Patristics Society (NAPS) resource page. The New Advent Catholic site has many Church fathers in translation (the alphabet index toward the top of the front page cuts through some confessional material). The Ameriacn HIstorical Association is in the process of creating a portal to link historians to major on-line collections of primary sources, and has included an ongoing  "Digital Primary Sources" section at the rear of the American HIstorical Review, beginning in 121(no.2) (12016); the AHA has also posted a link for updates and suggestions.

         Electronic serial bibliographies are great because, unlike standard library catalogs, they also index journal articles. There are two major proprietary medieval history serial bibliographies, the International Medieval Bibliography (unfortunately Texas Tech does not have an institutional subscription), and, somewhat larger and more oriented toward the Renaissance, ITER, to which TTU does subscribe. On how to access ITER , see the section above on "Electronic Archives and Bibliographies." Note that if you use Google or other search engines, references to articles listed in JSTOR may appear but you will not be allowed to access the text beyond one page--to get into those texts, you need to copy the title and log in to JSTOR through  the University Library system. And on the Web one can find also open-access individual efforts at serial bibliographies (like this one), produced by teachers attempting to provide students with quick and dirty lists of sources in a medium that can be updated relatively easily.  Among these lists of links, see, for examples, Adam Bishop (Toronto) "Online Resources and Digitized Books" (crusade emphasis); William Harmless (Creighton) "Medieval Bibliography #1: Suveys and Introductory Works" (annotated bibliography, good on ecclesiastical history); ////

         Online "encyclopedias" of medieval studies offering gateways to research once appeared to be a major step forward in medieval scholarship. Unfortunately such sites appear to be falling by the wayside, presumably because it has been hard to get preoccupied academic professionals to provide time-intensive universal coverage on a volunteer basis.  These gateway sites have been outflanked by larger less-professional sites such as Wikipedia and by universal search engines such as Google. Among the casualties was the Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies, hosted by Georgetown University and initially promoted by the Medieval Academy of America. Another was ORB, "the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies," an academic site "written and maintained by medieval scholars for the benefit of their fellow instructors and serious students, with all articles judged by at least two peer reviewers and authors held to high standards of accuracy, currency, and relevance to the field of medieval studies"--this well planned site remained mostly unbuilt and dropped off the internet in summer 2015.  NetSERF, the self-proclaimed "internet connection for medieval resources," still survives, perhaps bcause, although it too contains much unbuilt territory, it offers more than 1500 links to other sites.  The WWW-VL History Central Catalogue World History Index, the oldest catalogue on the Web (1991-) , run by volunteeers who supervise particular sections, has a European subsection, but it has dropped a couple of earlier attempts at medieval history units, and now appears to be dormant in many areas.
        Some free general gateway sites still live.   Das Mittelalter im Internet is a general site, more focused on Continental resources.  Mediaevum.de: Mediävistik im Internet offers a guide to medieval studies, with some introductory English pages taht take the reader to German-langauge formatted bibliographical pages.

          Specialized gateway sites, providing bibliographical and electronic links on particular fields of medieval studies, have fared better than the universal sites. Among the specialized areas are:

Archives (esp. French):  The École des Chartes, the French school of "diplomatic" (that is, the study of charters) helps sponsor Theleme: Bibliographie d'archivistique médiévale which deals with medieval "diplomatic" in general, but oriented toward French sources.

Art History:   The Index of Christian Art, founded at Princeton in 1917 was originally hundreds of thousands of index cards concerning approximately 200,000 photographic reproductions of Christian art in the east and west from early apostolic times up to A.D. 1400.  Since 1991, when computers were introduced to the Index, all new works of art documented by the archive have been electronically classified.  All of these records together with some material from the manual files is on an Internet application.  This is the largest database of medieval art in existence, with full-text records for over 23,000 works of art. Unfortunately, it requires a fairly pricey subscription or access to a subscribing library.

Bible: Many great sites exist.  Among these, for early manuscripts, see Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts; for medieval Bible commentaries in English translation, see Medieval Christian Biblical Exegesis in English Translation."

Bishops:  EPISCOPUS:  The Society for the Study of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Middle Ages publishes translated texts concerning medieval bishops and announces upcoming academic conferences of potential interest.

Byzantine Studies:  Byzantium, based at Fordham University, is a website prepared by Paul Halsall, the editor of the Medieval Sourcebook, as a WWW gathering point for Byzantine studies on the Interrnet. Much current research relates to projects at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections. Translations of primary sources and articles written from an Orthodox perspective, can be found at the St. Pachomius Library, which aspires to be "A Living Encyclopedia of Orthodox Christianity."

Calendars:  Dates in the Middle Ages can be difficult to calculate because of the wide variety of calendars that medieval writers used.  Among the sites giving aid are Ecclesiastical Dates (a calculating engine) and Zeitrechnung des Deutschen Mittelalters (an electronic presentation of Hermann Grotefend's nineteenth century book of chronological tables). Special sites exist for the Syriac Orthodox and other churches.

Canon Law:  The Domus Gratiani Homepage for Gratian Studies offers links to resources on medieval law. The Web site of the International Society of Medieval Canon Law posts conference notes, newsletters, and links to all sorts of canon law resources including the Medieval Canon Law Virtual Library.

Castles: Norman Connections: Discover Norman History is a site oriented to the general public featuring current castle images and archeology, along with other information about High Medieval England and Normandy.

Catholic Literature:   Documenta Catholica Omnia offers a huge e-book database of multi-language full texts, analytical indexes and concordances of Catholic and classic authors: although it is cumbersome to use, hard to cite, has prompts in Latin, and includes some odd editions in a variety of formats, it contains an unparalleled amount of free material, including Migne's Patrologia, many MGH texts, Mansi's Concilia, and many hard-to-find items. This site originates in Italy, apparently on a low budget, and has sometimes inexplicably gone offline.

Crusades:  There is an on-line Crusades-Encyclopedia.  Some links to crusade sources, chronology, and other materials are on the site of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East.

Crusade sources are posted or linked in Crusades-Encyclopedia .

 Dante:  "Danteworlds," is a multimedia website on Dante, combining artistic images, textual commentary, and audio recordings--through the three realms of the afterlife (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) presented in Dante's Divine Comedy. Available for each region are explanatory notes, a gallery of artistic images, recordings of significant Italian verses, and study questions--all aimed at enriching the experience of reading Dante's poetic vision of a voyage literally out of this world.

Emperors:  De Imperatoribus Romanis: An Online Encyclopedia of roman Rulers and Their Families.  An online encyclopedia covering Roman imperial leaders "from Augustus (27BC-AD 14) to Constantine XI Paleologus (1449-1453)."   Features good scholarly quality control.  

Latin:  Some medieval Latin dictionaries are now available on-line.  These include the first one, Charles du Fresne, sieeur du Cange (1610-88), Glossarium Mediae at Infimae Latinitatis, posted in a nineteenth century edition (Niort: L. Favre, 1883-87) by the Sorbonne, on a site which allows free search by word.  J. F. Niermeyer's Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, in the 2002 edition (which does not improve the first edition much except that it adds German to the English nad French language deifinitions) has been published by Brill ($382 hardcover), in an electronic version that can be accessed via subscribing libraries.

Literature:   Mittelalter Virtuell, a subsite of  Mediävistik im Internet, covers and provides access to electronic texts of "Antike und spätantike Literatur and Mittellateinische Literatur vom 6. bis 14. Jh."

Maps:  Medieval maps, most with links to inline images, are indexed in the Index of Cartographic Images Illustrating Maps of the Early Medieval Period, 400-1300 AD.

Medicine:    Medicina Antiqua--now maintained at the Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine at University College London-- is intended to be a scholarly introduction to classical medicine and a resource linking to other web pages related to medical history, especially classical medicine.

Medieval Latin Dictionararies: Classical Latin represents the language of about two generations of upper-class Romans who lived at the end of the Republic and the start of the Empire: for a long-serving English-language Classical dictionary, one ripped off from German philologists, see the online version of Charlton Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary.  However, Latin has been a living language for more than 2500 years, and, as a result, there are specialized dictionaries for many other Latins, including about 18 dictionary projects attempting to describe the medieval Latins of particular European countries.  The original general medieval Latin dictionary was by Charles du Fresne, Sieur du Cange (d. 1688), who wrote his Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis  (10 volumes in the final edition): the online version has a "rechercher" box that allows individual words to be looked up quickly and conveniently.  Today perhaps the most common general dictionary of medieval Latin is J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden: Brill 1976), which was posted online but now is down "due to issues with the item's content"--perhaps due to Brill protecting its copyright [the original Niermeyer presented definitions in English and French; Brill's second edition adds German).   There is a free version of a part (L through P) of the Novum Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis (Latin from 800-1200), which is part of the French DuCange project, supplemented by some material from the Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch.

Military History:  Medieval military history's relevant literature is reviewed on the De Re Militari site. This site did contain a great data base of relevant translated texts, which alas was disrupted by a 2011 malware attack that changed the URL designations and dispersed the texts all over the Web--the site is still not completely reassembled.

Monasticism :  For the Latin West, Benedictine bibliographic material is here organized around the Rule of Benedict.

Music:  Medieval Music has several great sites, including the Gregorian Chant Home Page, Lexicon Musicum Latinum, and CANTUS: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant.

Paleography:  Medieval Palaeography is a site designed as an introductory module (10 hours) for an MA course in English local history. Although its focus is very specific, it includes some general bibliography and enough web examples to illustrate problems posed by medieval scripts.  For medieval abbreviations,  the classic aid, now in its 7th edition, is the Dizionario by Adriana Cappelli, which, now out of copyright,  can be purchased from miscellaneous sites or new from Italy.  A 1982 English translation of its introduction, made by David Heimann and Skip Kay  is available for free on-line.  A fancy proprietary on-line aid compiled from the classic Dizionario is at Abbreviationes.(sometimes offering a free 30-day trial).

Patristics:  Bibliographical Information Base in Patristics / Base d'Information Bibliographique en Patristique is an online searchable database of articles on patristic topics with some 30,000 entries culled from 325 academic journals. Search terms must be submitted in French.  See also the North American Patristics Society (NAPS) resource page.

Reviews for books on the MIddle Ages written after 1993 can be found in the archives of The Medieval Review, the largest medieval electronic reviewing website.

Saints:  The Bollandists, a scholarly society founded in the seventeenth century dedicated to the study of saints, maintain a website dealing with hagiography, writings on the saints, and their own particular projects in this field. Much biblography can be found on a John Howe online syllabus for a graduate course in hagiography.

Theology: Bibliographies for Theology offers topical bibliographies, including special sections devoted to "New Testament," "Early Christianity," Medieval Christianity," and "Reformation."  These break down into subchapters listing basic books and offer some minimal annotations.

Thomas Aquinas.  The Corpus Thomisticum not only provides the works of Aquinas online, but also, as you call up a pareticular work, automatically reaveals how it should be cited.

Women's Studies:  Feminae:  Medieval Women and Gender Index covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages. This index was begun in 1996 as a tool to help researchers find current articles and essays quickly and easily. It is counterintuitive in that books are not indexed in Feminae; for these, you must check major library catalogs.

Many other excellent sites could be listed, but those listed above can lead you to them. Be aware that the internet is filled with uninformed fantasy concerning things medieval. If you attempt to use general search engines to investigate medieval topics, you will soon discover the truth of the maxim that "Hours spent on the Web can save minutes spent in the library." But if you attempt to locate materials by beginning with the assistance of academic sites, then the WEB is a great asset .