Medieval History

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Internet Medieval Sourcebook

Selected Sources: Studying History

Contents

• Using Primary Sources
• Medieval Documents
• Accessing Medieval Documents
• The Uses of History

• Why Study History Through Primary Sources.
• How to Read A Primary Source. [At Bowdoin College]
• Using Primary Sources. [At Then Again]
• Thucydides: On Inventing Speeches, from History of the Peloponnesian War [At this Site]
• The Need for Source Criticism: A Letter from Alexander to Aristotle?
• Natalie Zemon Davis: "Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead": Film and the Challenge of Authenticity, The Yale Review, 86 (1986-87): 457-82. [At Stanford]

• WEB Byzantine Paleography, with sample texts and images.
• WEB Medieval Paleography, with sample texts, ed. David Postles [Website]
• WEB Early Modern Paleography, with sample texts, ed. David Postles [Website]

• The Great Document Collections
  • Migne
  • MGH
  • RHC
  • Muratori
  • The Rolls Series
• Archives
• The English National Archives
  • TNA Website

• Gerald W. Schlabach: A Sense of History: Some Components [At St. Thomas] [His Ten Commandments of Historical Writing are also worth a look.]
• Lord Acton: Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History, 1906 [At this Site]
  Acton defends a moral interpretation of people's actions in the past.
• Roland Barthes: The Discourse of History, Comparative Criticism 3 (1981): 7-20 [at UFL]
• The Nature of History: A Debate between Marc Trachtenberg and James M. Banner, Jr., 1998 
• For more texts on the nature of history see the Studying History section of the Modern History Sourcebook

The Internet Medieval Sourcebook participates in
ORB, the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies.