Rejoice! Over the past year, we've been hard at work digitising and cataloguing manuscripts connected with Medieval and Renaissance Women. We can now announce that all the manuscript volumes are online, no fewer than 93 (NINETY-THREE) of them. Many of these items were nominated by the readers of this Blog. We know that these manuscripts will support research into a wide variety of subjects that are close to our heart — women authors, female patronage and book ownership, women's health, education and business dealings, female spirituality, to name a few.

St Birgitta of Sweden, sitting and writing in a book, from a copy of her Revelations (Cotton MS Claudius B I, f. 117r)

You can download the full list here, with links to the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts site. There, you'll be able to peruse these manuscripts in full and for free from the comfort of your own living room, office or jacuzzi (perhaps don't try this at home).

PDF: Download Medieval_and_renaissance_women_digitised_vols_mar_2023

Excel: Download Medieval_and_renaissance_women_digitised_vols_mar_2023 (this format cannot be downloaded on all web browsers)

An indenture between Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, and John Islip, Abbot of Westminster Abbey (Lansdowne MS 441, f. 3r)

We've also been digitising a significant number of our charters and rolls relating to Medieval and Renaissance Women (218 charters at the last count and 25 rolls). We will make a separate announcement when all of these are online — many of them already are, if you have been following this Blog carefully (most recently Claim of thrones and Mary had a little lamb).

The opening of a chapter on skin care from Le Regime du Corps (Sloane MS 2401, f. 47r)

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Joanna and Graham Barker for their generous funding of Medieval and Renaissance Women, and essentially for making this all possible. We'd also like to thank our colleagues — the project co-ordinators, cataloguers, conservators, imaging technicians, digital specialists and fundraisers — who have been beavering away behind the scenes to bring this project to fruition.

The proceedings of the trial of Joan of Arc (Egerton MS 984, f. 3r)

From the works of Christine de Pisan, the first European woman to make her living from writing books, to treatises dealing with pregnancy, from cartularies and obituary calendars to the writings of Hildegard of Bingen and Birgitta of Sweden, not to mention the trial proceedings of Joan of Arc, we invite you to explore this wonderful and eye-opening collection.

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