Monday, April 14, 2008

Online Medieval Research and Recreation Resources

Pertaining to the 14th or 15th century:

Living History Groups:
La Belle Compagnie
Others

Medieval Recreation
The Society for Creative Anachronism
The Company of St. Michael


Suppliers
Other suppliers:
Thorthor's Hammer: Copper alloy and silver dress accessories
The Compaignye Store: Coin replicas, Ceramics and Haberdashery
Lorifactor Dress accessories, arms and armor, camp equipment
Reenactors Shop
Medievaldesign
Grunal Moneta Hammered coin reproductions. 650 BC to 1660 AD

Digitized Libraries, Museum Collections or Manuscripts
The National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) offers an excellent online resource for the study of medieval manuscript illumination. Manuscripts of particular interest to students of arms and armor are noted here.
Gallica
Mandragore
British Library
Getty Museum
Digitized Manuscripts Containing Middle English
Google Books is a really powerful tool for material which has been digitized. There’s a surprising amount that has been. These include Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage, with itemized expenses for the Asteley/Boyle combat of 1442, a French account of the Pas de Bergere and a Spanish account of the Passo Honoroso.
The University of Chicago is celebrating the acquisition of a manuscript of Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) and its reunion with Le Jeu des échecs moralisé (The Moralized Game of Chess), a manuscript that has been in the Library’s collection since 1931.
Online Searchable Museum Collection Databases
Image Use Contacts
UCLA's catalogue currently indexes 3,048 digitized medieval manuscripts.
Index of the Landauer and Mendel Hausbuchs
Index of Images of the Forme of Cury
Manuscript Miniatures: a database of miniatures depicting armored figures

Other Image Databases, Galleries and Collections
Armour in Art

Karen Larsdatter's site has a lot of images and articles related to medieval material culture from acrobats to zibellini. And it's searchable.
Effigies and Brasses
Kornbluth Photography Archive
Roel Renmans' Photostream: a great collection of photos of surviving armor and armor in painting and sculture, arranged chronologically.
Dmitry Nelson's Photo Gallery: armor, weapons, doublets, arming and otherwise, with some reconstructions.
The Complete Works of Albrecht Durer

Other Resources
Tales from Froissart
Deeds of Arms A Collection of Accounts of Formal Deeds of Arms of the Fourteenth Century edited by Steven Muhlberger
De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
Primary Sources on Warfare in the Middle Ages
Primary Sources from External Websites
The Soldier in Later Medieval England
The online database currently holds just under 90,000 service records. These are taken from muster rolls, housed in The National Archives (TNA), for the years 1369 - 1453.

I find it rewarding to browse this site by muster roll. Go to a particular year, select one of the references and do a search on that reference. Then sort the result by membrane. You can then scroll through that muster by parchment. You will continually encounter small retinues, each on their own strip of parchment, often consisting of one or two men at arms and a handful of archers. More than once you encounter Chaucerian retinues with a knight, a squire with the same surname and a few archers.

Accounts of Medieval Literacy and Education
This site has a variety of maps of Europe and Japan in the 14th century. Mostly modern, but includes links to the 14th century Catalan Atlas
The Electronic Middle English Dictionary
The Geoffrey Chaucer Website
Richard II's Treasure
A Preview of Purses in Pieces: Archaeological Finds of Late Medieval and 16th Century Leather Purses, Pouches, Bags and Cases in the Netherlands
by Olaf Goubitz
Using and Working with Horn
Steel and Iron Needles
Medieval Archaeology: The first 50 Volumes are available online for free.
Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330‑1500)
Francais Dictionnaire Ancien
Dictionary of the Scots Language
Google Search Tips
Reverso, a Free Online Translator

Blogs
Medieval Material Culture Blog.
A Commonplace Book
Unlocked Wordhoard
Muhlberger's World History

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