The Life of King Edward the Confessor

August 14, 2005 11:32 PM

The Life of King Edward the Confessor. A 13th century manuscript.
posted by plep (5 comments total)

Thanks for that plep. I went hunting around, wondering how the quality of colours etc had been maintained these past 800-odd years when I stumbled across a few other illuminated manuscripts which may be of interest - I'm not sure if these have been posted before however..

Burnet Psalter [Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), Bishop of Salisbury, historian, theological writer, and adviser to William III.]

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France: 1000 illuminations from The Age of King Charles V

Notre Dame University Medieval Manuscripts

DScriptorium Medieval manuscript portal

Cary Collection: Medieval manuscript leaves (Rochester Institute of Technology)

National Library of Netherlands manuscripts(I haven't looked through this one at all)

The Piers Plowman archive from the University of Virginia gives an indepth account of the work required for transcribing/digitizing Medieval manuscripts
posted by peacay at 1:36 AM on August 15, 2005

Thanks plep.
Looks like a marvelous manuscript, unforutnately the interface they designed to look throught his document is horrid. It's going to be a test of patience just to get through this document.

And thanks pecay, I will have to look through these as well.

Meanwhile, don't forget the marvelously arrogant British Library which allows you to troll through their treasures. I have to say though, I love the intereface they provide for leafing through the documents.
posted by fluffycreature at 5:52 AM on August 15, 2005

Thanks, plep and peacay!

(Has that Piers Plowman archive really not been touched since 1994? What's the point of having an online version if you're not going to update it? Or has nobody had any interesting thoughts or insights into Piers Plowman in the last decade?)
posted by languagehat at 6:10 AM on August 15, 2005

Neat stuff, Plep. I like that King Edward cures scorfara! It's odd to remember too that at his point in time, England was "closer" to Scandanavia than to France or the continent.
posted by klangklangston at 6:14 AM on August 15, 2005

languagehat: in 1994 they set out to create a CD-ROM version of the document; it must have been converted for the web in 2003, the copyright date.
posted by dhartung at 8:28 PM on August 15, 2005