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| MGH Scriptores | |
|---|---|
| Name | MGH Scriptores |
| Publisher | Monumenta Germaniae Historica |
| Country | Holy Roman Empire |
| Language | Latin |
| Discipline | History |
| Firstdate | 1826 |
MGH Scriptores is a principal series of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica dedicated to publishing editions of medieval chronicles, annals, hagiographies, and letters. It serves as a cornerstone for scholarship on the Carolingian, Ottonian, Salian, Capetian, and Angevin periods by providing critical texts for researchers working on figures such as Charlemagne, Alcuin of York, Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Frederick I Barbarossa. Scholars rely on it alongside resources like the Patrologia Latina, the Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, the Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, and the Monumenta Vaticana.
The project was established within the Monumenta Germaniae Historica under the patronage of princes and academies including the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen to address lacunae left by editions such as those of Dom Mabillon and Ludovico Muratori. Its foundation involved historians and philologists like Leopold von Ranke, Georg Heinrich Pertz, Johann Martin Lappenberg, and Ernst Dümmler, who aimed to produce reliable texts for research on rulers and institutions such as Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald, Rudolf of Habsburg, and Philip II of France. The series responded to contemporary scholarly needs shaped by debates involving Jacob Grimm, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, and the archival expansions in cities like Berlin, Munich, Leipzig, and Vienna.
Editions follow rigorous philological principles established in the 19th century by editors such as Georg Heinrich Pertz, Bernhard von Simson, Otto von Heinemann, and Wilhelm Wattenbach, emphasizing critical apparatus, stemmatic analysis, and manuscript collations drawn from repositories like the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Vatican Library, and the British Library. Later editors including Felix Liebermann, Heinrich Fichtenau, Paul Meyer, and Theodor Sickel updated methodologies to integrate paleography and diplomatics comparable to work by Ludwig Traube and Heinrich von Sybel. Major subseries and volumes have presented texts of chroniclers such as Sigebert of Gembloux, Regino of Prüm, Widukind of Corvey, Thietmar of Merseburg, Orderic Vitalis, and William of Tyre with full critical apparatus and indices modeled on standards from the Royal Historical Society and the Deutsches Historisches Institut.
The corpus includes texts spanning late antiquity through the High Middle Ages, encompassing authors like Paul the Deacon, Gregory of Tours, Bede, Hincmar of Reims, Notker the Stammerer, Flodoard of Reims, Rodulfus Glaber, Suger, Matthew Paris, and Ralph of Diceto. It covers regional foci including West Francia, East Francia, Lombardy, Burgundy, Bavaria, Saxony, Normandy, and Catalonia, and treats events such as the Viking raids, the Magyars in Europe, the Investiture Controversy, the First Crusade, the Fourth Crusade, and the Great Schism. The series publishes chronicles, annals, episcopal registers, royal diplomas, and collections of letters that illuminate institutions like the Frankish Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Carolingian Renaissance, and monastic centers such as Cluny, Fulda, Corbie, Reims Cathedral, and Monte Cassino.
Key contributors include editors and scholars such as Georg Heinrich Pertz, Leopold von Ranke, Otto Hartwig, Theodor Mommsen, Johannes Hoops, Eduard Kurze, Ernst Dümmler, Hermann Schulze, Maximilian Wilhelm, Heinrich Fichtenau, Felix Liebermann, Wilhelm Levison, Paul Fridolin Kehr, Johannes Fried, and Andreas Fischer. Manuscript scholars and paleographers like Bernhard Bischoff, Erwin Panofsky, E. A. Lowe, and Neil Ker have engaged with the edition materials. Institutional patrons and libraries including the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, and the Escorial Library have provided manuscripts and support.
The series reshaped medieval studies by supplying authoritative texts used by historians such as Friedrich Meinecke, Georges Duby, Marc Bloch, Carlo Ginzburg, Paul Veyne, R. W. Southern, Austin Lane Poole, and Christian Pfister. It influenced historiographical debates about figures like Charlemagne, Louis IX of France, Otto III, and Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor and informed research across disciplines that reference works by Jacques Le Goff, Norman F. Cantor, Rosamond McKitterick, David Knowles, and Gerd Tellenbach. Reviews and critiques have appeared in periodicals associated with the Historische Zeitschrift, the English Historical Review, and the Revue Historique, while competing editorial projects such as the Patrologia Latina and national series in France and Italy have prompted methodological comparisons.
In the digital era, many volumes have been digitized by institutions like the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Gallica platform of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Internet Archive, and the HathiTrust Digital Library, and are referenced in databases maintained by the Deutsches Historisches Institut, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica's own portal, and research infrastructures including Europeana and the Digital Scriptorium. Ongoing projects integrate TEI encoding, XML markup, and Linked Open Data standards used by initiatives such as Manuscriptorium, Kraken, and the International Medieval Bibliography, facilitating access for scholars at universities like Heidelberg University, University of Oxford, University of Paris, University of Cambridge, and Harvard University.
Category:Medieval studies Category:Critical editions