Guides: Medieval and Early Modern European History: Find Primary Sources

Primary Sources

What are primary sources?

Primary sources are original documents and objects created at the time being studied, such as diaries, newspaper accounts, letters, governmental records, or drawings. Any record that documents a past event can be considered a primary source.

Where can I find primary sources?

You can find primary sources in libraries, museums, and archives, including McGill's Rare Books and Special Collections Library (located on the 4th floor of the McLennan Library building). You can also find digitized primary sources online in library databases, such as those linked below, as well as in digitized collections, such as McGill's Digital Exhibitions & Collections.

su: Reformation England sources
su: Inquisition France sources
su: Europe history 1492-1648 sources

Medieval Collections

Online Medieval Sources Bibliography
An annotated bibliography of printed and online primary sources for the Middle Ages.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook
A resource of public domain medieval sources including translated primary sources, maps, and an increased emphasis on texts on women's and gender history, Islamic and Byzantine history, Jewish history, and social history.

Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Adam Matthew)
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The breadth of sources provided within this collection is extraordinary, from sources concerning the Black Death to the Restoration of the English monarchy and the Glorious Revolution.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Medieval family life (Adam Matthew)
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Contains full colour images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise family letter collections along with full text searchable transcripts from the printed editions, where available. The original images and the transcriptions can be viewed side by side.
Medieval Travel Writing (Adam Matthew)
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This collection presents manuscripts of some of the most important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period. The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia. It is an indispensable source for scholars of medieval travel, geography, exploration, trade, literature and medieval postcolonial studies.
Index of Medieval Art
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Archive of medieval art, describing and presenting iconographic subjects and images, without geographical limitation, from early apostolic times to the early modern era.
Library of Latin Texts - A
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Includes Latin texts for the "Medii aeui scriptores" period (736 - 1500),
Patrologia Latina
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The Patrologia Latina Database comprises the works of the Church Fathers from Tertullian in 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216.

Early Modern Collections

Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Adam Matthew)
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The breadth of sources provided within this collection is extraordinary, from sources concerning the Black Death to the Restoration of the English monarchy and the Glorious Revolution.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Age of Exploration (Adam Matthew)
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Explore five centuries of journeys across the globe, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts in this multi-archive collection dedicated to the history of exploration. Featuring rare manuscript and early printed material, highly illustrated maps and documents, diaries and ships' logs from some of the most well-known voyages in history, this collection provides access to key events in the history of European maritime exploration from c.1420-1920.
Early Modern England (Adam Matthew)
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A collection of resources focused on illuminating the lived experience of people of all socioeconomic classes in early modern England.
Early English Books Online (New ProQuest platform)
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Contains page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere, between 1473 and 1700.
Library of Latin Texts - A
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Includes Latin texts for the "Recentior latinitas" period (1501 - 1965).
Virginia Company Archives (Adam Matthew)
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Virginia Company Archives provides a comprehensive record of the history of the Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624. Centred upon the archives of the Ferrar family who played a significant role in the Company's administration, this resource documents the founding and economic development of the Virginia colony, relations between colonists and Indigenous peoples, and early trade between Britain and America. It is also a crucial source for London's economic history and the religious and social history of early modern England, with further content documenting the Ferrars' continued interest in the European colonisation of North America in the years after 1624.

AGAPE
AGAPE is an open-access bibliographical database which aims to map the reception of the Greek Church Fathers in print throughout early modern Europe. AGAPE records every edition of Greek patristic works printed in Europe from 1465 to 1600 in the original language, as well as in Latin and vernacular translations
Sources of Early Modern Emotion in English, 1500-1700
Sources of Early Modern Emotion in English, 1500-1700 (SEMEE) is a living, collaborative project designed to aid researchers working on emotion and affect in the English Renaissance. It contains editable bibliographies of primary sources related to the study of emotion, as well as a bibliography of secondary scholarship on early modern emotion.

Eighteenth Century Collections (Gale) - New Platform
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Full-text searchable database including books, pamphlets, essays, and broadsides published in the UK and elsewhere during the 18th century. Primarily includes English-language works, but there are also some other language items included.

Scientific Revolution (Internet History Sourcebook)
Primary sources related to the Scientific Revolution, part of the Internet Medieval Sourcebook hosted at Fordham University.

Reformation & Counter Reformation

Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts (Alexander Street Press)
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A uniquely exhaustive resource for historians, theologians, political scientists, and sociologists studying the religious and social upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts gives researchers immediate, Web-based access to an extensive range of seminal works from the Reformation and post-Reformation eras with a focus on Protestant thinkers.
Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation (Alexander Street Press)
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A uniquely valuable resource for historians, theologians, political scientists, and sociologists studying the religious and social upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation gives researchers immediate, Web-based access to an extensive range of seminal works from the Reformation and post-Reformation eras with a focus on Catholic thinkers.

Tracking the Luther Controversy
Digital exhibit from the Newberry Library (Chicago) tracking the spread of the "Luther Controversy" (the origins of the Protestant Reformation) across continental Europe through objects in the Newberry's collections.

Women, Gender, and Sexality

Epistolae: Women's Medieval Letters
Collection of medieval letters to and from women dated from the 4th to the 13th centuries to and from women, presented in the original Latin and in English translation.
Monastic Matrix
Scholarly resource for studying women's religious communities from 400-1600 C.E., including primary and secondary sources as well as a bibliography.

Defining Gender, 1450-1910 (Adam Matthew)
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Contains access to original British source material from 1450 to 1910 with a gendered perspective.
Perdita manuscripts : women writers, 1500-1700 (Adam Matthew)
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Complete facsimile images of manuscripts written or compiled by women living in Britain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Manuscripts held by McGill Libraries

Medieval Manuscripts at RBSC (Rare Books & Special Collections)

McGill Rare Books and Special Collections holds more than 235 medieval manuscripts, spanning from the 9th to the 15th century.

HORAE: Collection of Books of Hours
McGill Rare Books and Special Collections. This online exhibit features 37 Books of Hours in both manuscript and printed form, from the 14th to 16th centuries. Bilingual French and English.

Catalogue raisonné des livres d'heures conservés au Québec by Brenda Dunn-Lardeau
Call Number: Z7838.H6 C37 2018
Publication Date: 2018
Includes descriptions of medieval manuscripts held at McGill. Available as eBook and in print by request in the Rare Books Reading Room.