This chapter investigates how local priests related to their superiors by examining a set of handbooks for bishops that were made in the Rhineland and surrounding regions. These handbooks have been overshadowed in the historiography by Regino of Prüm’s well-known Sendhandbuch. However, Regino’s handbook was not the only collection of material available, and this chapter highlights nine manuscripts that – it argues – were composed for the organisation of the episcopal Sendgericht. Through these itinerary courts of law that these manuscripts point to, bishops imposed discipline on priests in their diocese, who during the tenth and eleventh centuries experienced an increasing degree of control that they had not known before.

This chapter provides an overview of web-based resources for the study of the history of English and varieties of English around the world which have been developed in the two decades since the completion of The Cambridge History of the English Language (Hogg 1992–2001) as well as materials in preparation now. Topics cover online versions of reference works like manuscripts and facsimiles, editions, dictionaries/concordances and maps; corpora and databases which can be searched on the web; multimedia learning tools which supplement traditional classroom teaching, for example companion websites for textbooks, TED and YouTube; and communication platforms which help develop the field beyond academia, such as blogs, podcasts, Twitter and Facebook. The chapter also discusses some desiderata in the currently available resources.

This chapter provides an overview of manuscript production and reception in the OE and ME periods. It focuses on how manuscripts were produced, the cognitive copying practices of its scribes, the subsequent use of manuscript texts by their readers, and the implications these issues have for the texts and data that survive. It considers the methodological issues arising from working on manuscripts in both their physical and edited forms. The chapter argues for the importance of considering manuscript evidence – including material aspects of the text – when using such texts as data for linguistic enquiry, and the value of this overlooked material for increasing our understanding of diachronic change. Finally, the chapter highlights and demonstrates some fruitful approaches to medieval textual material from the disciplines of historical sociolinguistics, dialectology, pragmatics and philology.

This chapter examines courtroom documents, focusing on trials and depositions, which offer glimpses of spoken language of the past. Trials written in English, often in the form of questions and answers, are rare before the late sixteenth century. Depositions, the oral testimony of a witness recorded by a scribe prior to trial and used as evidence, become more available in English from the mid sixteenth century. Trials and depositions exist as manuscripts, contemporaneous printed texts and later printed editions, and have recently become accessible through corpora and modern linguistic editions. Manuscripts (already one step beyond the original speech event) are less susceptible to interference by editors, printers and so on, but even these texts should not be treated as verbatim records. Nevertheless, the texts supply valuable data for researchers taking historical pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches and/or examining linguistic variation and change, and in a wide range of other areas.

Travel manuscripts and printed books tell us how scribes and printers had to think carefully about representing foreign lands. Sometimes this meant turning the ordinary into the marvellous to capture the imagination of their readers; at other times this meant turning the strange into the recognisable. The manuscripts and printed books they produced translated tales of the unfamiliar into material palatable for domestic readers, which often required a careful balance of accuracy in relating travellers’ accounts and imagination to satisfy readers’ appetites for novelties. This essay looks at how travel literature circulated in manuscripts, how printers took advantage of the appetite for travel narratives, and what hybrid forms of manuscript and print tell us about who was reading them and the way travel literature was being read. As travel literature is a broad category that encompasses marvellous accounts, diaries, itineraries, letters, guidebooks, devotional aids, maps, and other narratives, my aim is not to offer a comprehensive overview but a few examples that demonstrate how the material context of travel literature can reveal much about their reception, use, and development.

Chapter 2 explores the influence of the exilic Ovid in medieval scholastic contexts by examining three types of medieval forms. Firstly, accessus (introductions to authors) shaped how Ovid’s poetry would be interpreted: their heavy reliance on Ovid’s exilic self-fashioning and biographising meant that Ovidian exile came to frame Ovid’s entire corpus. Secondly, manuscripts of Ovid’s exile poetry and their paratexts, especially glosses and marginal annotations, provided a framework for teaching and learning through Ovid’s exile. Finally, florilegia and excerpted forms of Ovid’s exile poetry posed a challenge to that life–work connection formed by the exile poetry, ostensibly withdrawing the context of Ovid’s full output; but they nevertheless retained enough order for Ovid’s exile to be recognisable. Examining these forms illustrates two key aspects of medieval responses to Ovid’s exile. Accessus, glosses and florilegia are all deeply connected to pedagogy and to a medieval ‘scholastic sphere’ – monastic and secular places of learning in which Ovidian exile could be used to teach and preach. Further, the proliferation, diversity and sheer quantity of these different types of exilic Ovidiana are evidence for the popularity and widespread knowledge of Ovid and his exile in the later Middle Ages.

The appendix gives contextual details about the dataset from the Fitzwilliam Museum manuscript collection, digitally restored through the various inpainting imaging techniques described and analysed in the book. The content of each manuscript and the particular restoration challenge is briefly described.

Chapter 5 focuses on specific strategies to addess inpainting in real-life cultural heritage restoration cases, such as the colour restoration of old paintings, the inpainting of ancient frescoes, and the virtual restoration of damaged illuminated manuscripts.

Shelley was a prolific and varied writer of correspondence throughout his short life. The work of collecting, editing, and annotating Shelley’s letters has been going on since the 1840s, but large portions of his early and Italian correspondence remain lost. The essay discusses this corpus and its critical history before examining three types of letters that Shelley was particularly adept at writing. Shelley’s adversarial letters to older men such as his father show his mastery of a radical bombast; correspondence with contemporaries such as Hogg and Hitchener shows him harnessing the form for the debate of ideas; and his long descriptive epistles about Italy, addressed to his friend Peacock, constitute some of the finest travel writing in English. T. S. Eliot was quite wrong to claim Shelley’s letters are ‘insufferably dull’: this essay begins to think about the elements of their content and style that reveal their literary achievement.

An overview of the physical state of Rome in the year 900, followed by an introduction to each of the major categories of material culture to be discussed: architecture, painting, icons, sculpture, inscriptions, manuscripts, ceramics, and coins. A rationale is provided for the format of the book: not a diachronic chronological survey as such, but instead organized around four overarching themes.

The Christian community of Rome, since its origins, was adamant in preserving written texts. Documents and books of multiple kinds were treated as important, precious objects. The history of the popes’ libraries exemplifies this approach. In addition to spreading Christianity and keeping records of discussions and decisions taken by the Church, the library was intended as a repository not only of religious books but also of literary and scientific texts of non-Christian traditions, including pagan classics and others. The mission of ensuring the conservation and spreading of the knowledge was clearly stated during humanism, when the current Vatican Apostolic Library was founded. Books were there made accessible “for the common benefit of the learned.” Such a mission continues today. The papacy considers the Library and its books to be the “heritage of mankind,” one that needs to be made available for generations through continuous technological innovations and cutting-edge preservation strategies.

The Ottoman Empire left a rich and multilingual legacy in history writing, one that scholars are only starting to explore. Eclipsed for a time after the opening of the Ottoman state archives, chronicles attract intense interest not only as sources to be mined for facts, but for what these works can tell us about wider issues – from elite and popular worldviews to politics and patronage, literary history, intellectual horizons, and others. But if the study of the past through reading, writing, copying, and listening to works of history was hugely popular in the empire, Ottoman views of history are not entirely like our own, especially in their conceptual baggage. This chapter surveys some of these issues: What are the sources? How can we access them? What kinds of practical or methodological issues do they raise? Last, what paths do chronicles offer for future research in Ottoman studies?

Commensurate with its vast geography and long history, the Ottoman Empire had varied artistic and architectural cultures. Ottoman visual sources reflect the cultural identities, intellectual priorities, and personal as well as political aspirations of artists and patrons. They are instructive about methods of production, the circulation of goods (artworks, artifacts, and raw materials), and creative practices in palaces and urban centers. This chapter focuses on painting and architecture and surveys the available visual materials, demonstrating some of the innovative ways in which recent research has treated Ottoman painting and architecture.

This chapter introduces readers to the main source for marriage ritual, namely the Byzantine priest’s service book known as the euchologion. A brief typology of Byzantine euchologia is given, and a discussion of the benefits and methodological limitations in the use of euchologia for the writing of cultural history.