Welcome This website provides access to the medieval manuscripts of Philadelphia —
books written entirely by hand, and often gloriously illuminated with sumptuous pictures.

Organized by PACSCL | Powered by OPenn | Funded by CLIR

The Philadelphia region is home to a large number of libraries with truly outstanding special collections, most of whom are members of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) Fifteen of these libraries have catalogued and digitized 450 medieval Western European manuscripts with the generous support of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), via its Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives initiative. All images have been released into the public domain.

Three of the fifteen libraries provide project leadership and management: the Free Library of Philadelphia. Lehigh University Libraries and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. The cataloguing of these manuscripts was undertaken by scholars from the Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies at Penn Libraries.

This data is freely available in full resolution and in machine-readable formats on OPenn , the University of Pennsylvania's site for the hosting of digitized cultural heritage materials licensed as free cultural works. This website provides a user-friendly interface for that data so that all users can easily access this extraordinary material, discover which institution holds which manuscripts, and uncover the depth of medieval resources in the Philadelphia region.

If you would like to give us feedback on the interface or the manuscript contents, please fill out the form here