Images of Medieval Manuscripts from Leeds University Library

Images of Medieval Manuscripts from Leeds University Library
Some 685 digital images from our medieval illuminated manuscripts are now available online : http://ludos.leeds.ac.uk/collection/medmss
Twenty-seven different manuscripts have been drawn on for the project, including four from Ripon Cathedral Library (held at Leeds University Library). Apart from the Hours associated with the Bedford Master Workshop (Brotherton Collection MS 1), the Genealogical History Roll (Brotherton Collection MS 100) and one small fragment, which have been photographed in full, the manuscripts are represented selectively, but all miniatures and all significant illuminated borders and initials have been included.
The images are described in detail, with iconographic subjects and textual contexts identified, and can be searched for by keyword or phrase (e.g. dragon, music, peacock, Eve, St. Sebastian, Compline, Salue sancta facies). The images can also be browsed, either all of them from the homepage or by subject terms, illuminators, or types of illumination in the form of hyperlinks in the image descriptions (e.g. Saints, Master of the Adair Hours, Historiated border). The manuscripts themselves can also be browsed, and full descriptions of them are available via “View parent object”.
Future plans include the digitisation in full of the Library’s three Middle English manuscripts. Two texts from Brotherton Collection MS 501, ‘The Seven Works of Mercy’ and ‘The Finding of the Cross’, are already available via the URL above.

Katja Airaksinen and Oliver Pickering
Brotherton Library
University of Leeds