Looking for a geographical/chronological bibliography for medieval Europe

by langmuirdarkspace

I've been looking for a bibliography of texts available in Europe between the ninth and fifteenth centuries but have had no luck. Specifically, I need to know what texts were available where and starting (ending) when. For example, how quickly after the Arabic>Latin translations of Greek texts began in Toledo were those texts available in Avignon? Paris? Trier? Moscow? How easily could someone have gotten their hands on a Greek NT or Hebrew OT in particular cities at particular times?

I've googled the internet dry and even cold-emailed medieval specialists, to no avail. Any help will be appreciated.

Enrico_Dandolo

This is a very difficult question. We do have some bibliographies of books held in certain monasteries, these are exceedingly rare and more often than not, partial lists. The other problem is that oftentimes, the entire book would not have been copied. Other times, you get ideas taken from places like Aristotle and simply summarized. This was done because books were expensive and an entire copy of of one of Aristotle's works would be too long to put into a single book. Thus, evidence of ideas found in works of Greek philosophers is not evidence of the physical presence of their writings. Finally, given the interest in "manuscript hunts" in the Renaissance, whole collections were often moved around.

I would suggest you look at, The Book in the Renaissance, by Pettegrew. It's a wonderful book on the history of print, but the first chapter addresses a good number of the problems associated with your question.

The HMML (http://www.hmml.org/research.html) is the largest collection of microfilmed manuscript libraries. Although they primarily work in endangered collections in the Middle East and Africa these days, during the 20th century they microfilmed entire collections of monastic libraries in Europe. If you poked around their website you might find something.

Why do you need to know this? If it's a project for school, any specifics are not terribly feasible.