Digital resources are particularly important now during these difficult times. Text Manuscripts is not new; in fact it is the oldest digital initiative of Les Enluminures, launched not quite twenty years in September 2002. The site, www.textmanuscripts.com, offers the largest and most wide-ranging inventory of text manuscripts currently on the market, with new items added bi-annually in the Fall and in the Spring. It is also an invaluable scholarly resource for medievalists everywhere. Sold manuscripts remain online for research and citation in our extensive archive (which now includes almost 1,000 well-described manuscripts and images).
Just posted on April 9, 2020, our Spring Update is particularly exciting (online here). It adds twenty-four manuscripts to the site and suggests how they can inspire topics for new research. These topics include owner-produced books (TM 1013 and TM 1068); a hybrid incunable that offers a glimpse into the workshop of an early printer (TM 1049); a textbook that reveals how teachers and students used manuscripts in the classroom (TM 1052); women and the book with at least five examples from convents in Italy, France, and the Low Countries (TM 1023, TM 1055, TM 1058, TM 1059, TM 1084); and unusual formats and technologies, including a pedigree scroll (TM 1061) and two stenciled music manuscripts, one of which is also a hybrid (manuscript and stenciled) (TM 1023 and TM 1046).
Current inventory: https://www.textmanuscripts.com/medieval (to see the complete archives, go to the search bar near the top of the page, and first choose “more options” (or go to the drop-down menu under “advanced search”), and then select “all” under inventory (you can also choose “new” to see just the manuscripts in our current update).
Laura Light,
Director and Senior Specialist, Text Manuscripts, Les Enluminures
