Following the cyber-attack on the British Library last year, staff have been working behind the scenes to restore access to the Library’s digitised manuscripts. The Library has now made an initial batch of 1,000 digitised items available online, of which over 600 are ancient, medieval and early modern manuscripts.

A full list of the items, with links to their digitised images and summary catalogue information, can be consulted on the British Library website. Improvements to the discoverability of the manuscripts will be made in due course.

The page for Easter Sunday in the Sherborne Missal: Add MS 74236, p. 216

A highlight is the Sherborne Missal (Add MS 74236), a service book containing all the texts required for celebrating Mass on the different feasts, holidays and saints’ days throughout the year. Made for the Benedictine abbey of St Mary in Sherborne, Dorset, the manuscript has been called one of the masterpieces of 15th-century English illumination, with decoration on nearly all of its 694 pages. You can read more about the manuscript in our previous blogpost and listen to a guided tour and discussion of the page for Easter Sunday as part of the BBC’s Moving Picture Series.  

A phoenix rising from the ashes, from an illuminated Bestiary: Harley MS 4751, f. 65r

The selection also includes all 400 manuscripts digitised as part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project, a ground-breaking collaborative project between the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The manuscripts, made in England and France between the years 700 to 1200, comprise a wide range of texts and topics, including biblical, liturgical and theological works, science, music and medicine, Classical and contemporary literature and works on history and law. Among them are a lavishly-illuminated Bestiary (Harley MS 4751), with illustrated accounts of birds, beasts and fantastical creatures, and the Eadui Psalter (Arundel MS 155), a copy of the Book of Psalms, written by a scribe called Eadui Basan at Christ Church, Canterbury in the early 11th century, with a partial gloss in Old English.

The Beatus page of the Eadui Psalter, showing the opening of Psalm 1: Arundel MS 155, f. 12r

There are also a number of manuscripts containing significant works of Middle English literature. They include the ‘Amherst Manuscript’ (Add MS 37790), a Carthusian anthology of theological material containing the only surviving medieval copy of the Short Text of The Revelations of Divine Love by the anchoress Julian of Norwich. This work is an account of the 16 mystical visions Julian experienced in her early 30s, and the earliest surviving example of a book in the English language known to have been written by a woman.

The Short Text of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love: Add MS 37790, f. 98v

As further digitised manuscripts become available online, we will post updates about them on the Medieval Manuscripts blog. Browse a list of all currently available digitised manuscripts here. 

Follow us @BLMedieval