Sixteenth Century Editions of Primary Source Documents

This page is maintained by David Whitford. It is meant to be a clearing house of sites with downloadable or viewable primary source documents in their sixteenth-century editions (e.g., by Stephanus or Froben). It is not exhaustive, but it tries. If you find other resources out there, please contact David so that he can update the page. They need to be the sixteenth century editions.

ALL OF THESE SOURCES ARE FREE. I have not listed any pay sources at all.

 

Primary Source Documents:

 

ANALYTIC BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ON-LINE NEO-LATIN TEXTS – This should be everyone’s first stop. Dana Sutton deserves the thanks of every Ren/Ref scholar out there. It is a massive list with links to thousands (as of May 2009, 31,200) of Latin works published or written in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.

 

Gallica – the online digital library of the French National Library – if you do not find what you are looking for on Dana’s site, try here next. Once you have found your document, at the top of the page (in the middle) you will see a printer with a pdf marker, click that to create and then save a pdf to your hard drive.

 

Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts (VD 16) – If you know or believe that your document was produced in the Holy Roman Empire, try here. Top right hand corner you will see, PDF-Download. If it is a hyperlink, you can download a PDF. It it isn’t a hyperlink then you cannot. Check back though, because I’ve found documents that after a while do become downloadable.

 

Universitat de Valencia – The library has Spanish (and some New Spain) works. Can be downloaded or printed.

 

Fondos Digitalizados de la Universidad de Sevilla – Lots and lots of sources here. Some can be downloaded and printed.

 

Biblioteca Virtual Andalucia – downloadable and printable.

 

Jewish National Library Digital Book Repository – This site has many of the most important works in Hebrew published in the early modern era.

 

Bizkaia’s Provincial Library – Documents are viewed in Java and can be saved or downloaded. Online versions are designated with an open book at the bottom of the page.

 

Zentrales Verzeichnis Digitalisierter Drucke – this aims to be the first place you will need to go for everything, but it is still a “to be realized” goal. Still always worth checking out.

 

Digitale Bibliothek (for all things Luther)

 

Herzog August Bibliothek – Lots of things digitized, finally (!) downloadable, and more added everyday.

 

University of Strasbourg - Digital old books Not a ton of items here, but more added all the time.

 

Colección Digital Complutense -- I don't think you can download from here yet, but you can see the pages and save them as individual tiff files. A really nice collection of medical texts.

 

Archive.org -- Here it is best to search for the item you are looking for by the title, making sure to try both u and v for u's and v's, etc. There are a lot of Calvin editions here (search under "calvin, jean").

 

Biblioteca Digitale dell'Universitŕ di Bologna you have to go to the search page and then look from there. I haven't found a way to download from here.

 

 

 

 

Other more specific places to look:

 

CAMENA - Corpus Automatum Multiplex Electorum Neolatinitatis Auctorum – full of primarily political documents. Can be downloaded.

 

Cornell Library Witchcraft Collection – fairly self-explanatory.

 

European Cultural Heritage Online

 

Documenta Catholica Omnia – the name is a bit of an overstatement. These are not many original editions from the early modern era, but it does have a lot of useful stuff, including fully downloadable editions of Migne’s Patrologia Latina and Patrologi Graca.

 

Alchemy Website – has lots of pictures, articles, and some early modern editions.

 

Early Modern Cartographic Resources on the World Wide Web

 

 

 

 

 

Some other helpful resources for understanding or deciphering:

 

A. Cappelli’s Dizionario di Abbreviature Latini ed Italiani, a downloadable copy from 1901 here.

 

Graesse’s Orbus Latinus – nice to have when you can’t remember what a city name was in Latin (or what it is now when the Latin name shows up in a book you just downloaded!)

 

Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch

Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch 

Elektronische Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 

Grotefend, Zeitrechnung des Deutschen Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (really handy if you don't happen to know off the top of your head the feast day of Sts. Felix and Regula!)