Subject and Course Guides: Medieval Literature: Primary Sources

Primary Sources :: Defined

Primary sources provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic or question under investigation. They are usually created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented. Often these sources are created at the time when the events or conditions are occurring.

"Primary sources . . . are defined as the direct evidence of a time and place that you are studying – any material (documents, objects, etc.) that was produced by eyewitnesses to or participants in an event or historical moment under investigation. Secondary sources, in contrast, are interpretations – often generated by scholars – that are based upon the examination of multiple primary sources." (from Primary Source.org)

Types of Primary Sources

What types of primary sources might have been produced that would be relevant to your topic?

Which persons or organizations might have produced materials?

Possible formats include:

Books, manuscripts, maps
Diaries, journals, memoirs
Letters, speeches
Data, statistics
Documents produced by organizations and government agencies

Primary Sources Online

The Aberdeen Bestiary
The Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24) is considered to be one of the best examples of its type. The manuscript, written and illuminated in England around 1200, is of added interest since it contains notes, sketches and other evidence of the way it was designed and executed.
British History Online
The digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. Created by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust, we aim to support academic and personal users around the world in their learning, teaching and research.
British Library : Sacred Texts
Explore 78 texts online. Jewish, Christian and Islamic holy books, including some of the world's most precious Hebrew and Christian Bibles and Qur'ans, plus Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian texts.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
William Caxton's two editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, probably printed in 1476 and 1483. The originals are both in the British Library.
Digital Scriptorium
A growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research.
Domesday Book
A detailed survey of the land held by William the Conqueror and his people, the earliest surviving public record, and a hugely important historical resource.
Global Medieval Sourcebook
A free, open access, and open source teaching and research tool. It offers a flexible online display for the parallel viewing of medieval texts in their original language, in new English translations, and in their digitized manuscript form. The GMS spans one thousand years (600-1600) of literary production across the medieval world (Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia). It contains primarily short texts of broad interdisciplinary interest in a variety of genres, and many of the texts have not previously been translated into English.
Henry III Fine Rolls Project
The Project is making freely available to all on its website translations of the rolls for Henry’s reign between 1216 and 1272. The rolls on which the fines were recorded provide the earliest systematic evidence of what people and institutions across society wanted from the king and he was prepared to give.
Irish Script on Screen (ISOS)
A project of the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The object of ISOS is to create digital images of Irish manuscripts, and to make these images - together with relevant commentary - accessible on a WWW site.
Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature
Luminarium is an independent site with secondary sources as well as full-text works of English literature from the medieval and Renaissance periods and beyond, including Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare.
Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts : Univ of Vermont
Contains images of 21 unbound manuscript items and 10 bound manuscript items from the Special Collections of the University of Vermont, Bailey/Howe Library. These manuscripts were written in various locations across Europe and the Middle East, from early in the 12th century to the 17th century C.E.
Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
This database contains all kinds of information about the illuminated medieval manuscripts of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands) and the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum.
Medieval Manuscripts on the Web
Offers quick access to various digitization projects on the web. Site maintained by Prof. Sian Echard, Dept. of English, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Monastic Library of Lorsch
The Lorsch manuscripts of the former monastic library and scriptorium are today scattered all over the world. However, palaeographic research, and in particular the Carolingian inventories have enabled us to localize 330 original Lorsch manuscripts and fragments in 68 libraries around the world, and to once again unite them virtually.
Piers Plowman Electronic Archive
A collaborative open-access project, presents the rich textual tradition of Piers Plowman, a fourteenth-century allegorical dream vision attributed to William Langland.
Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts
The Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts (DLMM) currently encompasses the Roman de la Rose Digital Library and the Christine de Pizan Digital Scriptorium.