Monastic Manuscript Project.

The Monastic Manuscript Project is a database of descriptions of manuscripts that contain texts relevant for the study of early medieval monasticism, especially monastic rules, ascetic treatises, vitae patrum-texts and texts related to monastic reforms. We provide lists of manuscripts for each of these texts, which are linked to manuscript descriptions. The purpose is to offer a tool for reconstructing not only the manuscript dissemination of early medieval monastic texts but also to give access to the specific contexts in which a text appears.

The database supports current edition projects and draws attention to understudied texts and the transmission of fragments, excerpts and florilegia. It is designed to facilitate the work of students and scholars who are interested in the history and reception of texts and who want to work with manuscripts rather than rely on modern editions.

Most pages provide links to a number of web resources, such as manuscript catalogues, online texts and translations, digitized manuscripts and repertoria. Manuscript descriptions are usually based on published manuscript catalogues and secondary literature. We hope to  replace these often incomplete and inaccurate descriptions with new ones that are based on hands on studies of the manuscripts themselves.

The Monastic Manuscript Project is conceptualized as a 'Wiki' project. Every student or scholar who works on monastic manuscripts is invited to contribute new manuscript descriptions, to fill in gaps and to submit additions and corrections to existing pages. Eventually the project will become a forum for collaborative work and the presentation of new research.

The database currently can be searched for authors, texts, manuscripts, incipits, genres, and provenances. Other inquiries, about scripts or on CLA numbers, for example, can be carried out with the site search function (below).

Source: DM