Relaunch "Manuscripta Juridica"

The Max Planck Institute for European Legal History has relaunched its website „Manuscripta juridica“ with an enlarged set of data and new search mechanisms. The site presents a census of handwritten texts, focusing on texts in Latin, and predominantly texts from medieval times before the invention of the printing press. The database also accommodates texts in vernacular languages and texts not from the Middle Ages. Its stock had been collected by institute staff from the 1960s onward and was digitized in particular by G. Dolezalek. At present ca. 8 600 manuscripts are considered, containing about 20 000 texts. In addition, ca. 1 200 catalogues or inventories of manuscripts were perused. Their reports were crossed over with findings published in ca. 700 scholarly publications on legal history. The database thus tells users "who published what and when and where, on handwritten juridical texts."