Research Guides: HSTY 3332, HIST 5351: Medieval Europe: Find Primary Sources

Librarian

Contact:

936-294-1520
kclaunch@shsu.edu
Library (NGL) Room 223G

Primary Sources in Print

Often a variety of primary documents are collected together into a book (usually related to a time period, topic, or theme).

Below are just a few broad collections in the Library; each book contains many original documents.

(Note: many of these books will contain both primary and secondary content, so use your judgement or ask a librarian for help in distinguishing the two).

Sources in Medieval Culture and History
Call Number: CB351 .S59 2011, 4th floor

The wide range of primary sources featured in this book trace the development of medieval civilization from the era of the Roman Emperor Diocletian to the late fourteenth century. The events of these years are viewed from various perspectives, including selections from legal documents, annals, letters, contemporaneous biographies, paintings, theological and philosophical treatises, historical writings, architecture, and literary extracts.
Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sources
Call Number: DP97.4 .M43 2012, 4th floor

These documents collected in Medieval Iberia date mostly from the 8th through the 15th centuries and have been translated from Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese. Nearly one quarter of this edition is new, including visual materials and increased coverage of Jewish and Muslim affairs, as well as more sources pertaining to women, social and economic history, and domestic life. This primary source material ranges widely across historical chronicles, poetry, and legal and religious sources.
Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation
Call Number: DG501 .M535 2009, 4th floor
Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History
Call Number: HQ1143 .M44 1990, 4th floor
Putnam's Dark and Middle Ages reader : selections from the 5th to 15th centuries
Call Number: PN667.W4, 3rd floor
Medieval Popular Religion, 1000-1500: A reader
Call Number: BR252 .M42 1997, 4th floor

Unique collection of 82 sources that casts light on the beliefs and practices of ordinary Christians in the Middle Ages.
Tradition and Diversity: Christianity in a world context to 1500
Call Number: Read Online - Or print is available: BR160.A2 J65 1997, 4th floor

A primary source reader of 100 selections that addresses medieval Christendom in the context of world history, including issues of cross-cultural contact and exchange.
Feudal Society in Medieval France: Documents from the County of Champagne
Call Number: Read Online

Some two hundred documents from the country of Champagne, assembled, translated, and annotated in a sourcebook that focuses on the political, economic, and legal workings of a feudal society, uncovering the details of private life and social history that are embedded in the official records.
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, Vol. 2
Call Number: Read Online

This is the second volume in what will be a translation with full scholarly apparatus of the entire correspondence of St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179).
The Black Death: The great mortality of 1348-1350 : a brief history with documents
Call Number: RC178 .A1 A237 2005, 3rd floor

Nearly 50 documents organized into topical sections that focus on the origin and spread of the illness; the responses of medical practitioners; the societal and economic impact; religious responses; the flagellant movement and attacks on Jews provoked by the plague; and the artistic response.

Primary Source Collections Online

Internet Medieval Sourcebook
(Fordham University)
EuroDocs
Collection of websites containing transcriptions, facsimiles and translations of various primary sources on topics throughout European history. These documents range in time period from ancient to modern, and are also organized geographically by country. (Brigham Young Univ.)
Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy
(Yale Univ. Law School)
De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
Hosts "many primary sources, articles, dissertations, and resources for the study of military actions, technology, and topics from the fall of Rome to early seventeenth century." (Society for Medieval Military History)
Digital Scriptorium: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts
A growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. (Univ. of California-Berkeley)
Treasures from the National Archives: Middle Ages, 1066-1484
(National Archives, U.K.)
Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscript
Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Western Europe, 9th - 16th centuries
(New York Public Library)
Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts
Manuscripts written in various locations across Europe and the Middle East, early 12th century - 17th century C.E. (Univ. of Vermont)
The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
Provides free, organized access to resources in medieval studies; connects users to databases, services, texts, and images around the world. (Martin Irvine and Deborah Everhart, Georgetown University
Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Collection of the Harry Ransom Center
(University of Texas at Austin)
Gallica bibliotheque numerique (from the BNF)
Search engine to thousands of books, documents, maps, manuscripts, images, sound recordings, and more from the Bibliotheque nationale de France and their partners.
Alternative, English-language start page: http://gallica.bnf.fr/?lang=EN
BiblioPhilly: Search Interface for the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis Project
Search high-resolution images of more than 160,000 pages of European medieval and early modern codices — virtually all of the holdings of PACSCL member libraries.

What is a Primary Source?

Primary vs. Secondary Sources: A Guide to Understanding

The Crusades: Primary Sources

Often a variety of primary documents are collected together into a book (usually related to a time period, topic, or theme).

Below are just a few broad collections in the Library; each book contains many original documents.

(Note: many of these books will contain both primary and secondary content, so use your judgement or ask a librarian for help in distinguishing the two).

Arab Historians of the Crusades
Call Number: D157 .S76 1984, 4th flooor

Contemporary Arab accounts of the fighting between Muslim and Christian. Extracts are drawn from seventeen different authors encompassing a multitude of sources showing the Crusades through Arab eyes.
The First Crusade: The chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and other source materials
Call Number: D161.1 .F57 1998 , 4th floor
The Deeds of the Franks and Other Jerusalem-Bound Pilgrims: The earliest chronicle of the first crusades
Call Number: D161.1 .G413 2011, 4th floor
God, Humanity and History: The Hebrew First Crusade narratives
Call Number: Read Online
The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen: A history of the Normans on the First Crusade by Raoul, de Caen, 1080-1120
Call Number: Read Online

First translation into English of Ralph of Caen's Gesta Tancredi. Exceptionally important narrative of the First Crusade and its immediate aftermath, covering the period 1096 - 1105, but often neglected. The most important Latin source for the Norman campaigns in Cilicia (1097 - 1108), and for the early Norman rule of Antioch. The work as a whole has a striking Norman point of view and contains details found in no other source.
The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades: Extracted and Translated from the Chronicle of Ibn Al-Qalanisi
Call Number: Read Online

Remarkable contemporary account of early Crusades by one of Damascus' leading citizens covers events of 1097-1159. Based on both written and oral reports, colorful narrative relates every particular of life during wartime.
Christian Society and the Crusades, 1198-1229: Sources in translation
Call Number: Read Online - Or print is available: D151.P47, 4th floor
Crusade and Christendom: Annotated documents in translation from Innocent III to the fall of Acre, 1187-1291
Call Number: D151 .C765 2013, 4th floor
The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The history of the expedition of the Emperor Frederick and related texts
Call Number: Read Online

This is the first English translation of the main contemporary accounts of the Crusade and death of the German Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (ruled 1152-90). The main text here, the 'History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick', was written soon after the events described, and is a crucial, and much under-used source for the Third Crusade. A number of subsidiary texts also translated illustrate and expand this main account, and place the crusade in context.
Cathars and Albigensian Crusade: A Sourcebook
Call Number: DC83.2 .C38 2014 - 4th floor

Diverse range of medieval sources to examine key aspects of the growth of heresy and dissent in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the Church's response to that threat through the subsequent authorisation of the Albigensian crusade.
The Seventh Crusade, 1244-1254: Sources and documents
Call Number: D167 .S48 2007, 4th floor
How to Defeat the Saracens by William, of Adam, approximately 1275-approximately 1338
Call Number: D172 .W55 2012, 4th floor

Find more in the SHSU Library catalog . . .