The Digital Medieval Manuscript

Material Approaches to Digital Codicology

Series: 

We increasingly encounter medieval books as digital facsimiles—zooming in on high-resolution images, clicking through virtual pages, or engaging with interactive displays. But what actually happens when a parchment manuscript is translated into a digital object? How does this change affect our understanding of cultural heritage?
This book explores the digital medieval manuscript as a unique cultural artifact, not just a copy of its physical counterpart. Through three case studies, it reveals how digital manuscripts function in libraries, museums, and scholarship today. Blending manuscript studies with digital humanities, it offers a fresh materialist approach to the discourse surrounding the digitisation of cultural heritage and provides a nuanced view of how it shapes the way we perceive, handle, and preserve medieval manuscripts in an increasingly digital world.
Copyright Year:
2025
E-Book (PDF)
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-73781-5
Publication:
09 Sep 2025
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-70573-9
Publication:
04 Sep 2025
Cover The Digital Medieval Manuscript

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Suzette van Haaren is a postdoc in the CRC Virtuelle Lebenswelten at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her research reflects on the impact of the increasing digitisation (and virtualisation) of historical heritage. She is interested in the Middle Ages in contemporary media contexts.
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Figures

1 Introduction
 1 Digital Codicology
 2 A Word on Terminology
 3 The Whole Book
 4 Digital Material
 5 It’s a Matter of Time
 6 Outline and Structure

2 The Bury Bible: Exploring Mediation, Materiality and Digitisation
 1 Introduction
 2 An Institutional and Environmental History of the Bury Bible
 3 A New Presence: Capturing the Bury Bible for Digital Space
 4 Conclusion
 3 Reproduction, Fragmentation and Dissemination of Der naturen bloeme (kb, ka16)
 1 Introduction
 2 The Book of Nature in Copies
 3 The Digital Fragment and Hyper-expansion of ka16
 4 Conclusion

4 The Sustainable Prayer Book of Mary of Guelders
 1 Introduction
 2 The Interrupted Life of the Prayer Book of Mary of Guelders
 3 Preserving the Fragile: Sustainability for Parchment and Pixel
 4 Conclusion

5 Conclusions
 1 Digital Codicology  2 Making
 3 Using
 4 Keeping
 5 Time
Bibliography
 Primary Sources
 Literature
Index
Manuscript scholars; medievalists; librarians; archivists; libraries and archives; digital humanists; cultural heritage scholars; heritage professionals; heritage photographers; digitisation experts; post-graduate students interested in cultural heritage/history/art history. Keywords: Medieval studies; medieval manuscripts; digital medievalism; library science; information science; libraries; archives; special collections; digitisation; digital humanities; heritage photography; reproduction; copying; internet studies; memes; digital sustainability; interoperability; data studies; metadata; computational humanities; computational medieval studies; digital media studies; technology; science and technology studies; history; art history; source material; Bury Bible; Der Naturen Bloeme; Mary of Guelders
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