One Thousand Scriptoria

May 15, 2016 6:55 PM

Where could I find a list of significant cathedrals and monasteries in Europe at or around 1000 AD / CE?

I am particularly interested in religious institutions that would have housed a scriptorium or writing studio, the kind that produced illuminated manuscripts (like the Abbey of Reichenau) - or a library where such works were collected.

Geopolitical maps are easy to find, religious ones... less so.

Would areas under Islamic rule, like Córdoba, be producing any Christian works at this time?

posted by Paragon to Religion & Philosophy (2 answers total)

A cathedral is simply a bishop's principle church, so there is one per diocese, dioceses don't overlap, and diocesan maps and lists are relatively easy to find (although it'll be easier to do country by country than pan-Europeanly, for specific dates). Here's a place you can see a comprehensive view of all 3000 extant and about 2000 empty dioceses, all of them for all of Catholic history, with dates. This is simply a bureaucratic records question and Catholics excel at bureaucratic records.

Now, finding scriptoria is a much harder task; I think you'd probably want to find some scholarly reference books about manuscripts of that time period and find someone who lists every scriptorium he can find evidence for.

Christian works were definitely in Islamic libraries (some of them saved from the Dark Ages that way) but I don't know where they would have been copied -- locally or in distant Christian centers.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:16 PM on May 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would call the Cloisters in NYC and ask to speak to someone in their treasury/book collection. They would probably be able to direct you to the exact resources you're looking for.
posted by sexyrobot at 8:41 PM on May 15, 2016