Historians are normally trained to work first (and sometimes next and last) from written documents. You can be a good historian without paying much attention to "things", objects, buildings, artefacts and visuals of all kinds. Yet visual impressions constitute an important and lasting part of our experience as human beings. I see no reason to believe that things were any different in the middle ages. To the contrary, the men and women of the period were, as you must already have noted, much less bounded than we are by writings. When Koenisgberger says (p. 379), "For every one person, in historical times, who read a book there were a hundred who listened to music, who sang and who danced", he could easily and probably should have added some remark about visual communications. Pre-modern Europeans acted and were acted upon, we think,through oral rather than literate modes much more often than we.

          We therefore ignore medieval visuals, at our peril and with real loss. Visible documenta (check it out in your dictionary) are just as likely to teach us novel and intriguing lessons as our texts. And some of you will be even better at "reading" them than you are with writings. I am not, on the whole. I have been known to describe myself as challenged in visual perception. (My wife puts it differently, using some short, sharp words.) But even I may be changing now that the Web makes first-rate reproductions and pictures so easily available at our desks.

         So please, take your time over this assignment. Wander through our galleries, seeing what you see, before you choose your object. And spend some real time looking hard at them, taking in the detail, puzzling out their message. Of course you will find much out about your chosen object from books or at other Web sites. But the real value of the exercize lies in what you can discover for yourselves through the use of your own eyes. Good luck.
 

This Virtual Gallery developed out of an experimental Virtual Museum project in which Cornell was involved with several other museums and universities. Alas, this has now ended.

           Before you move on to the aptly named Koenigsberger Kloisters whose resources are literally world-wide in scope, you ought to check out resources on campus. You should certainly use the assignment as an excuse to visit the Johnson Art Museum, which can claim to be the most neglected resource on campus, and free at that. Its current policy sensibly imports loan objects for temporary exhibition from other collections, such as at the moment the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. You will find a small gallery of medieval artefacts on the First Floor. Among a number of objects well worth a look are the following:

• Wooden Sculpture of St. Anne with Virgin and Child    This was the first medieval artefact displayed to my knowledge on the World Wide Web, and already publicized in the U.K. Guardian newspaper in July 1995. You can compare it with another example from the Met of similar early 16th Century date.
• Marble Virgin and Child, 14th cent.Venice.
• 2 Ivory Diptychs, 14th cent. France.
• Alabaster Relief of the Resurrection, 14th cent. England. (Alabaster objects of this kind were enormously popular and widely sold in the later middle ages.)
• Illuminated Book of Hours, 15th cent. France.
• Stone Portal sculpture of Lioness with cubs, Bologna, Italy, late 12th cent.
• Painted wooden scultpure of St. George and the Dragon, 15th cent. Germany. (One knows that so much of the sculpture was painted in bright colors. This late example suggests how others too must once have looked.)
• Painted wooden altar sculpture of the Crucufixion, 15th cent., Bavaria.

          The objects etc. listed below are an eclectic collection. They represent some of my own favorite images from those available on the Web at this early stage. Though they have come out rather biassed towards the earlier middle ages, they should still give you enough beautiful and/or interesting things to choose from. You must take each image or set of images on its own terms. Some allow you to zoom in by clicking again and see a much magnified image. Others offer a whole series of images for the price of a single one. Just remember, please, that a number do quite literally come from half a world away so that today's still archaic technology may take quite a while to load them onto your browser. Then, relax, enjoy, and maybe study too! Never forget too that you will be able find much information about your objects and images and perhaps check your initial theories in things called books kept in libraries; try Sibley as well as the more obvious Uris and Olin.

    The bigger the image, the longer it will take to download. Some take several, even many, minutes on my machine. But I think my selections are worth waiting for. Anyway, you cannot skim usefully at speed through images!

This sign indicates a link not yet in full working order, one that I want in the Kloisters. Give me time, and I may restore it. Or better still, find it on the Web and send me the location details. 

• The Lindisfarne Gospels [cf. Koenigsberger, pl. 2. 9]
• The Book of Kells Some more images. There is a CD-Rom facsimile
• The Caedmon MS, c. 1000. One of the 4 great MSS which give us (virtually) all our Old English verse, and some fine drawings too.
• Beowulf The British Library offers no online images, now that the CD-Rom is available!
• Page from Carolingian Miniscule "Terence", c. 825
• Page from Beatus' Apocalypse, Spain mid-tenth century
• Otto III's Gospel Book: 4 Nations Reverence the Emperor [cf. Koenigsberger, pl. 2. 5]
• Saint Dunstan's Classbook, late 10th cent. You can look at the whole book, from the Bodleian Library, Oxford [link below], leaf by leaf.
• The Oxford MS of "La Chanson de Roland", 1st half 12th cent.
• The Eadwine Psalter There is a fine facsimile in book form. Online, though, you can see some good bits, including a page to introduce you to chiromancy (?!), a splendid scene from Genesis, an equally fine Besieged Psalmist (Ps. 37), and a b/w illustration of the way three versions of the psalter sit side by side.
• St. Bernard at his writing Check out the details!
• The Bayeux Tapestry [cf. Koenigsberger, pl. 3. 3]. There are various versions of part or whole of this on the Web. The best, if you have a decent computer and room for a Shockwave plug-in, is Osprey's, which is almost like seeing the marvellous real thing.But see Lynn Nelson's lecture for hints on how to use this and other resources.
• Magna Carta, 1215
• Miniature from Bible Moralisee, Paris c. 1230
• 13th cent. Miscellany, including Bestiary in French verse, from England.
• Collection of Musical Treatises, from Yorkshire, ? 1372
• There is a whole collection of MSS of the "Romance of the Rose" to browse through.  Or try a heavily illuminated copy, France late 15th cent., made for mother of a future king, and a somewhat earlier, illustrated one from France, c. 1348.
• John of Worcester's Chronicle, bef. 1140. He may have written this in his own hand in his own monastery. Do check out the nightmares of king Henry I on pp. 382-3!

• The Bodleian Library, in Oxford, England, has made a whole set of brilliant images available from its manuscript collection. Try its Contents List for something to your taste.
• Another starting point for manuscripts is a vast collection from the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
• Or Descriptorium.
• Or the Berkeley-based Digital Scriptorium.
• Or the  specialized UCLA Index of Medieval Medical Images and collection from the National Museum of Medicine.
• Or Syracuse University's collection.
• But the best overall Cornell online option will in time be the Amico Library which currently brings together 
  90, 000 images from member libraries. You can try this link now, but need to know what you are looking for.

• Ravenna, Italy has an uniquely surving group of Byzantine churches with mosaics (5th cent.) Tour the city (Choose "English"!) and then try one set of views or another of San Vitale. and its mosaic apse, watching out for the images of Justinian and Theodora [cf. Koenigsberger, pl. 1. 3].
• The Treasure of Sutton Hoo (7th cent.) The Sutton Hoo Society is one excellent introduction to the site, the Sutton Hoo Room and Current Archaeology offer good alternatives.
• The Oseburg Ship (9th cent.) [cf. Koenigsberger, pl. 2. 4]. and another image.
• The Lindau Gospels (8th cent) [cf. Koenigsberger, pl. 2. 1],  The Morgan Library shows both covers, which can be seen elsewhere along with decorated opening page.
• Carolingian Equestrian Statue of Emperor ? Charlemagne [cf. Koenigsberger, pl. 2. 2]
• Utrecht Psalter (9th cent.) and other Illuminated MSS of the Carolingian Renaissance
• Byzantine Mathematical Text Book, 888. Can you identify the Euclid theorems?
• The Gero Crucifix (c. 975). Adam Veil gives it some context.
• The Benedictional of Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester (c. 975/80)
• Chess (12th Century style)
• Abbey Church of Hildesheim, c. 1010/33 and its splendid bronze doors (be sure to scan the series).
• Autun Cathedral, with the sculptures of Giselbertus (c. 1130) Both are quite special. Overview here. I have an Eve on my own pages, and a better one here; can she not have been observed from life?
• Church of Ste. Madeleine, Vezelay, take-off point for the Second Crusade (c. 1130); St. Bernard preached in front of the tympanum (below), and may well have used it as his text.
• BEST STARTING POINT       FRENCH TOURIST GUIDE
• THE VEZELAY NARTHEX TYMPANUM       ANOTHER VIEW         NAVE
• Church of St. Pierre, Moissac
• The Winchester Bible (late 12th cent.)
• The Gloucester Candlestick (1104/13)
• The Cloisters Cross, perhaps from Bury St. Edmunds (?3rd quarter 12th cent.)

    Ask me about this and the fine book on the anti-Jewish program that inspired it.

• Monte Gargano on the heel of southern Italy was one of the great pilgrimage sites. It was in fact where the Norman conquerors of the south are said to have met up with each other. When I hitch-hiked there as a student, people were still making votive offerings (drawings of a cart accident that had caused a broken leg, and metal impressions of sick hearts, hands, eyes etc.) to secure the aid of the saint (Archangel Michael) in providing a cure!
• The City and Cathedral of Canterbury, England
• Castles on the Web A vast collection of different castles to choose from. Some further individual examples are:
• Berkeley, England
• Wales
The Bastidesof South-Western France
• Clairence
• Cordes
• Perigord
• Twelfth Century Crusader Map of Jerusalem
• Hezekiah and the Water Clock, from a Bible Moralisee, Paris, 1235/45, also available here. You can probably learn about the Bibles Moralisee in DMA, or through some of the many studies in Olin.
• The `Vein Man', from Late 13th cent. English anatomical MS, also available here
• The Gough Map of Great Britain (14th cent.) You need to click your way through the copyright agreement, on to page 2, & then on a thumbnail copy.
• Illuminated MS of Mystery Play, from 14th cent. France.

Some Books of Hours:

• The Bean Books of Hours             The Gertrude Hill Gavin Books of Hours
• Woman's Book of Hours, from Rouen, France, c. 1500
• Les Tres Riches Heures de Jean Duc de Berry
• The Sforza Hours
• Codex Arundel: A Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci

Two other slide lists open to your view are Paul Szarmach's groups of images selected to illustrate the Old English poems, The Battle of Maldon and Dream of the Rood; the latter is especially recommended for its images of the 8th Century Ruthwell Cross and its in-church location.