This book is witness to Hendrik Vanden Abeele’s research into the development, construction and creation of a present-day performance practice of late medieval plainchant, based partly on his work with the Belgian chant group Psallentes.

What can a doodle tell us about the person who drew it? Erik Kwakkel is a Dutch book historian at Leiden University who searches for the secret meanings of doodles and scribbles in medieval manuscripts. He talks to BBC World Service about his passion for books.

Over 600 manuscripts and early prints have been made digitally available by Leiden University Libraries (UBL) via the Europeana platform. In the project 'The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ (ARMA), seven European heritage institutions added 30,000 digitised medieval items to Europeana’s database…

Do you frequently search the catalogue of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) for western medieval manuscripts? Then you must have noticed important changes lately. Some 1800 summary catalogue records in Dutch were replaced by more elaborate descriptions in English. Furthermore, the catalogue interface…

Recently, some changes have been made to the catalog of Leiden University Library, making more than 1000 digitized codices more accessible than before. The 'Inventory of Western Medieval Manuscripts Held by Leiden University Libraries,' created by manuscript curator André Bouwman, is also now available:…

During the early modern period, many medieval manuscripts were cut up into strips of parchment which were reused to reinforce the bindings of newly printed books. Until recently, these reused pieces of medieval manuscripts only came to light when the early modern book binding was damaged and/or subjected…

Cat Paw Tweet Goes Viral

How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

Radboud University Nijmegen is advertising a position for a Postdoctoral Researcher in Medieval Manuscript Studies (0.8 FTE) to be part of the research team of the ERC-funded project "Patristic Sermons in the Middle Ages. The Dissemination, Manipulation, and Interpretation of Late-Antique Sermons in…

Did you know that Arabic was for centuries the lingua franca in an area stretching from the south of Spain to the Chinese border? And that the Middle East under Muslim rule was the world’s beating heart of trade, but also of science and scholarship?

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

This book explores the production and use of medieval manuscripts that contain classical Latin texts. Six experts in the field address a range of topics related to these manuscripts, including how classical texts were disseminated throughout medieval society, how readers used and interacted with specific…

The School of Celtic Studies (DIAS) is organizing a conference on medieval multilingual manuscripts. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars working on medieval bilingual or multilingual sources from a variety of linguistic backgrounds, geographical areas, and literary genres. It will…

Humanities, Centre for the Arts in Society

Interview for National Public Radio sparks media frenzy.

Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production

Erik Kwakkel, researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, has found an extraordinary manuscript in the University Library’s extensive collection of medieval books. The book in question dates back to the first half of the eleventh century and is made entirely out of waste left over from the production of…

How did Anglo-Saxons reflect on the experience of growing old? Was it really a golden age for the elderly, as has been suggested?

Within the Dutch Research School for Medieval Studies, medievalists from six Dutch universities work together. The school (together with the local graduate schools of the universities) takes care of the training of researchers focussed on the Middle Ages and provides educational activities…

This collection brings into conversation several kinds of scholarship on medieval authorship which have tended to remain separate over the last two to three decades, a period of steadily increasing scholarly interest in this topic.

The Corfu Papers

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial…

Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Eastern Cuisine and Western Foodways

Mapping sanitary infrastructure in large urban societies in the Low Countries, 1200–1900

Politically speaking, the Frisian coastal area constitutes a special case in late medieval Europe since it was not subject to an overlord as it withstood feudalization in the 13th century. Its many sub regions, which were dominated by elites of small noblemen and freeholders, long time succeeded in…

Due to the fact that the Frisian lands lacked major political centers in the Middle Ages and also because most of its monasteries suffered complete destruction in the second half of the 16th century, relatively few written documents concerning medieval Frisian history have survived. To analyze them…

Archaeometric analysis of glazed pottery assemblages from the Early Byzantine to the Early Modern periods in the Aegean.

The Medieval Studies Day 2023 will take place in Utrecht, on November 3. The theme is Public Engagement.

This research project studies the distribution and impact of medieval malaria in the Netherlands.

Generations of Leiden students and academics have done archaeological research into the early medieval history of Oegstgeest. This makes this old settlement one of the best-documented sites from that era. In a new book, Leiden researchers take stock.

This research cluster explores processes of cultural creation, reception and transformation within a wide range of societal contexts from the early Middle Ages until c. 1800.

Time, Agency and Memory in Ancient Mexico.

Magistri Symonis (?) Questiones secunde partis Doctrinalis Alexandri de Villa Dei First Critical Edition from the Manuscript with Introduction, Appendices and Indexes

University Lecturer Ahab Bdaiwi:

This thesis attempts to establish a dialogue between the modern and the medieval traditions in logic, by means of ‘translations’ of the medieval logical theories into the modern framework of symbolic logic, i.e. formalizations.

This summer school is for graduate (MA and PhD) students and researchers who have an interest in handwritten materials, editing, and the tradition of editing in the Muslim world. It offers theoretical lectures as well as hands-on practice with samples from the world-famous collections of the Leiden…

Mesoamerican Manuscripts: New Scientific Approaches and Interpretations brings together a wide range of modern approaches to the study of pre-colonial and early colonial Mesoamerican manuscripts. This includes innovative studies of materiality through the application of non-invasive spectroscopy and…

The physical features of twelfth-century manuscripts from the Flemish abbey of Ter Duinen – such as script, page layout, and reading aids – show how their readers organized, interpreted, and transmitted knowledge.

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Byzantine and Ottoman Archaeology, Amsterdam, 21-23 October 2011

This project investigates the full ecosystem of Middle Dutch prayerbooks in order to answer questions about their role in – and impact on – religion, culture, and society in the late medieval Low Countries.

The Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies (LAMS) is an academic initiative housed at the Leiden University Institute of Philosophy. It brings together researchers and academics working on one or more aspects of late antiquity and medieval studies, across the fields of philosophy, history, theology,…

In this course, we will focus on the fascinating history of the Arabic Medieval World. We will take you on a journey through the Middle Ages. All along, we will present you with historiographical debates and dilemmas and travel back and forth in time explaining to you how events of the past affected…

This research project focuses on the thoughts of ethnicity and political orthodoxy in Medieval China by investigating Wang Tong’s works.

This new study by professor Peter Hoppenbrouwers focuses on conflict in village communities of late medieval Drenthe in order to depict a typical peasant society in late medieval Europe.

This project aims to answer the following questions: how did the landscape and geography of the local surroundings of Chalcis impact medieval to early modern productivity, habitation, mobility and interaction in a wider sense? And where are such changes and continuations still visible in the landsca…

In his VIDI project “Turning Over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance” (2010-2015) Erik Kwakkel and his team studied how books and reading developed under influence of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, a period in which Europe went through a variety of cultural and intellectual…

How did the life course, with all its biological, social and cultural aspects, influence the lives, writings, and art of the inhabitants of early medieval England?

In Voices on Birchbark Jos Schaeken explores the major role that writing on birchbark – an ephemeral, even ‘throw-away’ form of correspondence and administration – played in the vibrant medieval merchant city of Novgorod and other cities in the Russian Northwest.

This project incorporates spatiality into the discussion of medieval demography, allowing for a more nuanced view on medieval town populations. It establishes a maximum population count for towns for periods prior to 1400 and provides a means to compare the ranking of towns using size and density instead…