Medieval

French Renaissance Paleography

Past special project. Paleography is the history and study of handwriting. Old scripts can be very beautiful, but sometimes difficult to read. This site presents over 100 carefully selected French manuscripts written between 1300 and 1700, with tools for deciphering them and learning about their social, cultural, and institutional settings. Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the resource was collaboratively created by Iter, the Newberry Library, UTL’s Information Technology Services department, and St. Louis University’s Walter J. Ong S.J.

Italian Paleography

Past special project. The Italian Paleography digital resource provides pedagogical tools for the study of Italian vernacular handwriting from 1100 to 1700 and features 102 digitized manuscripts. Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the resource was collaboratively created by the Newberry Library, UTL’s Information Technology Services department, and St. Louis University’s Walter J. Ong S.J. Center for Digital Humanities.

ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Past special project. Iter, meaning a journey or a path in Latin, is a not-for-profit partnership dedicated to the advancement of learning in the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700) through the development and distribution of online resources. As of January 2025, this project is active but no longer hosted by the University of Toronto Libraries.

Manuscript Studies in an Interoperable Digital Environment

The goal of the projects in the University of Toronto’s Making Medieval English Manuscripts cluster is to utilize and to

DEEDS (Documents of Early England Data Set)

In the early stages more than 1,500 private charters of the Great Cartulary of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, with particular reference to the County of Essex, were converted into electronic format. The wide range of computer-based analyses conducted on these charters allowed us to create an extensive research database containing information about personal names, relationships, occupations, properties both tangible and intangible, places and, where availble, dates which was easily accessible to the researcher.

The Dictionary of Old English

The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (C.E. 600-1150) of the English language, using twenty-first century technology. The DOE complements the Middle English Dictionary (which covers the period C.E. 1100-1500) and the Oxford English Dictionary, the three together providing a full description of the vocabulary of English.

The Mayors and Sheriffs of London 1190–1558

This database currently includes the mayors, sheriffs, and wardens of the City of London 1190–1558: their names, terms of office, and company (in the early years, craft/trade guild) membership or occupation. The database will gradually be expanded to include the years from 1559 to the present. Still later additions may include short biographies of the better-known mayors and sheriffs, and/or references or links to existing biographical sources.

Lexicons of Early Modern English

LEME searches and displays word-entries from monolingual English dictionaries, bilingual lexicons, technical vocabularies, and other encyclopedic-lexical works, 1480-1702. Texts of word-entries whose headword (source) or explanation (target) language is English tell us what speakers of English thought about their tongue in the period. Edited by Prof. Ian Lancashire, this publication contains over half a million word entries in 150 searchable lexicons, supported by extensive primary and secondary bibliographies.

Fisher Collection of Manuscript Fragments

Collection of 190 pieces of vellum in Greek and Latin illustrating the history and development of handwriting from the 4th century until the end of the Middle Ages. Items 1-21 (which are Coptic in origin) illustrate the development of uncial writing from the beginning up to its decline in Egypt in the 9th century. A detailed finding aid is available in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

REED Patrons and Performances

Professional performers of all kinds in England and Wales toured to provincial towns, monasteries and private residences before 1642. The REED Patrons and Performances Web Site is a searchable database about professional performers on tour in the provinces – their patrons, the performance venues they used and the routes they took across the kingdom.

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