Ranulf Higden. Polychronicon. England, ca. 1375.
Ranulf Higden was a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of St. Werburg in Chestershire, England. His Latin-language Polychronicon professes to be a universal history of the world from the beginning of time to 1342. As the most complete history available to the 14th century reader, it was a very popular text and remained so through the next century; London printers William Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde both produced editions of the English translation of the Polychronicon in the 1480’s and 1490’s.
Bestiary. England, 12th century.
Bestiaries were popular in the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly in England. A bestiary describes animals – both real and imaginary – and provides moral or allegorical interpretations of their characteristics or behavior.
The Dresden Sachsenspiegel. Germany, 14th century.
The Sachsenspiegel, or "Saxon Mirror," created in the 13th century, was the major text of laws used int he Holy Roman Empire. This facsimile reproduces one of four extant illuminated versions of the text.
La Commedia di Dante. Italy, late 14th century.
A reproduction of a highly-illustrated manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy.
The Ellesmere Chaucer. England, 15th century.
Facsimile of the famous illustrated manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, housed at the Huntington Library.