The Global Medieval Sourcebook (GMS) presents 100 texts, spanning one thousand years (600-1600 CE) and in 25 different languages. For each text in the compendium, the GMS offers a brief introduction, a transcription from a manuscript, incunabulum or published edition of the premodern source, and a new English translation. Texts are presented in a parallel display showing their original language and a new English translation.

The introduction to each text is written by a researcher in the field and aims to be scholarly yet accessible, providing a commentary on the text’s cultural context and transmission history as well as its content and the scholarly conversation around it. We provide brief bibliographies as a starting point to further research. In order to reach non-specialists, we have focused our selected bibliographies on English-language literature. In many cases, however, the majority of scholarship on the texts featured in the GMS is not in English. We have not attempted to cover or synthesize this scholarship comprehensively.

Texts are organized into thematic collections, which can be viewed on this website and are also findable in the Stanford Digital Repository via WorldCat. These collections emerged as the collection grew, and most of them cross cultures and languages to offer a selection of perspectives from across the globe on a particular topic or theme. It is also possible to view the entire database and search it by keyword, language, region of origin, or century. All texts in the repository are downloadable as TEI-XML files to allow for computational or other analysis, and these files are also located in the Stanford Digital Repository for long-term archival storage.

The GMS was made possible by funding from the Roberta Bowman Denning Fund for Humanities and Technologies at Stanford University, Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This repository is the result of seven years of collaborative work and has undergone significant transformation in scope, and technological infrastructure in the course of its life. These project developments are outlined in Mae Velloso-Lyons, Quinn Dombrowski, and Kathryn Starkey, “The Global Medieval Sourcebook: Creating a Sustainable Digital Anthology of Texts and Translations.” *Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies** 57.3 (2021): 193-216.