About Early Manuscripts
The early manuscript collections include manuscripts from the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods to 1700. Among them are the Edgar J. Goodspeed papyri collection; the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection of New Testament and related liturgical and devotional texts; late medieval and Renaissance secular and religious texts, including books of hours and works of Boccaccio and Chaucer; the Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection of English Court and Manorial Documents; the Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Collection of Northern Italian Historical Documents; and commonplace books, musical scores, sermons, papal dispatches, poetry, and letters.
Select Early Manuscript Collections
- Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection of English Court and Manorial DocumentsThe Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection in the University of Chicago Library comprises a remarkably complete chronological series of English court and manorial documents spanning the period from 1250 to 1700. The core of the collection consists of the muniments of title, court rolls, account rolls, rentals, and other documents that came to Sir Nicholas Bacon (1510-1579), Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth and father of Sir Francis Bacon, when he purchased monastic and other lands in the mid-sixteenth century.
- Goodspeed Manuscript Collection This link opens in a new windowThe Edgar J. Goodspeed Manuscript Collection comprises 68 early Greek, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Arabic, and Latin manuscripts ranging in date from the 5th to the 19th centuries. The acquisition of these hitherto unknown manuscripts was spearheaded by Edgar J. Goodspeed in the first half of the twentieth century in order to support new scholarship in the humanities.
- Manuscript Short Title CatalogThe Manuscript Short Title Catalog is a finding aid containing brief entries describing manuscript items, principally early manuscripts, in the holdings of the Special Collections Research Center. These manuscripts are identified by manuscript number (i.e., Ms. 100, Ms. 965). Manuscripts of this type include bound (codex) manuscripts as well as papyri leaves, parchment scrolls, and small groups of manuscripts on paper and other material housed in boxes, portfolios, binders, and other individual containers. The manuscript items described in this finding aid date from the medieval period to the present.
Each manuscript item can be located by a general keyword search. Manuscripts can also be identified by browsing listings arranged by the manuscript number (Ms.), Main Entry, Title, Date, and Language. For purposes of this database, musical manuscripts have been identified by language as "Music."
What is an Early Manuscript?
Early manuscripts are those documents produced by hand, rather than printed by machine. At the University of Chicago, our early manuscripts holdings encompass a variety of formats, including papyri, scrolls, and bound (or codex) manuscripts composed on parchment or vellum.
How to Use the Short Title Catalog to Locate Codex Manuscripts
The short title catalog is a database that contains records on codex manuscripts housed in Special Collections. You can use this catalog to locate the manuscript number for a specific manuscript and then request that manuscript through the Library's online catalog.
