Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Medieval manuscripts can be found in several ways:

1. There are a few online collections of digitized medieval manuscripts, which are listed on this page.
2. You may have a citation provided by another scholar, which will take the form of the repository and the manuscript's shelfmark - e.g. the so-called Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest manuscripts of the Greek Bible, is in the Vatican Library's Greek manuscript collection and would be cited as: Vat. gr. 1209.
3. Most large repositories have produced published manuscript catalogues, which list their holdings and give brief descriptions. A few of these catalogues have been put online and are listed on this page.
   • The finest collection of printed manuscript catalogues in the U.S. is uptown in Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
4. The essential guide to catalogues of Latin manuscripts is: Paul Oskar Kristeller, Latin manuscript books before 1600: a list of the printed catalogues and unpublished inventories of extant collections - fourth revised and enlarged edition by Sigrid Krämer (Munich, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1993). Bobst collection at Z6605.L3 K75 1993.
   • A supplement edited by Krämer and Birgit Christine Arensmann appeared in 2007. Z6601.A1 K68 2007 
   • An online edition is available from the MGH.
5. Also essential for scholars of Renaissance manuscripts is Kristeller's Iter Italicum ;a finding list of uncatalogued or incompletely catalogued humanistic manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other libraries, 6 vols. (London : Warburg Institute, 1963-1997 ).
   • It is available in the Reference Collection of Bobst Libary at: Z6611.H8 K7.
   • An online edition is available as part of Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance.