Click to open or download PDF: “Checklist of Western Medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library and the Scheide Library.”
The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections has very significant holdings of western medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance manuscripts, ranging in date from the 8th to 16th centuries. Most of them are in the Manuscripts Division, in the collections of Robert Garrett, Class of 1897; Robert Taylor, Class of 1930; Grenville Kane; and the growing Princeton Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.
This checklist is not a catalogue, but rather a listing of more than 500 manuscrits in the Princeton University Library and the Scheide Library by holding unit, collection, and manuscript number or shelfmark. Links are given for well over 2,000 digital images of miniatures, illustrations, and selected diagrams and decoration in the manuscripts, about a third of which are illuminated. It also provides links to digitized grayscale microfilm of Middle English manuscripts at Princeton and for a group of important manuscripts digitized in the Library since the 1990s. While Latin texts are predominant, there are excellent holdings of Byzantine and post-Byzantine Greek manuscripts, and vernacular manuscripts in Middle English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Dutch or Flemish.
Two recently published catalogues provide full textual and codicological description of western medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance manuscripts, illustrated with hundreds of color plates. In addition, the online checklist serves as a guide to sources of full cataloging and digital images for western medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance manuscripts in the Princeton University Library and the Scheide Library.
● Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library. By Don C. Skemer; incorporating contributions by Adelaide Bennett, Jean F. Preston, William P. Stoneman and the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archaeology and the Princeton University Library, in association with Princeton University Press, 2013). 2 volumes (I: xxv, 483 pages, 88 pages of plates; II: xix, 558 pages, 40 pages of plates): color illustrations; 30 cm: This catalogue covers the holdings of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
● Greek Manuscripts at Princeton, Sixth to Nineteenth Century: A Descriptive Catalogue. By Sofia Kotzabassi and Nancy Patterson Ševčenko; with the collaboration of Don C. Skemer (Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archaeology and Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, in association with Princeton University Press, 2010). xxix, 304 p., [174] p. of plates of color and black-and-white plates; 31 cm: This catalogue covers the holdings of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, The Scheide Library, Princeton University Art Museum, and Princeton Theological Seminary.
Photoduplication is readily available. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections maintains high-resolution digital files, slides, and transparencies for these manuscripts. For conservation reasons, use of a few manuscripts is restricted. For additional information and to make appointments, potential researchers are strongly encouraged to contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, at dcskemer@princeton.edu.