One of the largest collections of images of medieval manuscripts can be found at the Digital Scriptorium. This is a collaborative project among dozens of libraries, most of them at colleges and universities. You won’t find complete digitized manuscripts here, but highlights from various books. Most of the libraries that have contributed images have fairly small collections, but some, such as Columbia University, have some of the best collections of medieval manuscripts in the country. All of the contributing libraries are in the United States: this makes for an interesting collection, because it means that all of the manuscripts have been imported – the vast majority of them were created before Europeans had even discovered North America.
You will find a really wide array of manuscripts on the Digital Scriptorium, which is one of the things I really like about it – you’ll find everything from elaborate and opulent manuscripts owned by the nobility to everyday, run-of-the-mill books that would have been used by poor students or lower gentry. To get a broad idea of the range of manuscripts that were made in the Middle Ages, this is a great place to go and browse.
