IRHT – Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes

Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (IRHT-CNRS)

CNRS UPR 841

Director

François Bougard

Website

https://www.irht.cnrs.fr

The Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (IRHT), a unit of the CNRS, is located at Campus Condorcet, in Orléans and Paris. It is an internationally renowned centre of expertise which carries out fundamental research on medieval manuscript documents (on papyrus, parchment, paper, ostraca...) and on texts written on these media in the main cultural languages of the Mediterranean region, from Antiquity to the Renaissance.

The examination of the documentary sources leads to the production of indexes and catalogues. Major research programmes are conducted at the IRHT on medieval libraries in France, pre-modern Muslim law, Byzantine libraries, best-selling works of medieval Romanesque literature, the practice of commentary on the Sentences of Pierre Lombard in European universities, Europa humanistica, Latin translations of vernacular works, digital palaeography, etc. They call upon numerous French and international partnerships.

Responsible for the reproduction of manuscripts of the municipal and university libraries in France for the Ministries of Culture and Higher Education, the IRHT took the digital turn very early on and has since developed numerous databases and innovative tools. It is today very much involved in machine learning for automated pattern and character recognition and in electronic publishing.

Related resources and tools

	Image
Arkindex		A complete document processing platform developed by Teklia. It offers optical character recognition software (printed or handwritten) to extract text, analyze the content, then classify and index data according to your own setup.
Bibale		Bibale describes the history of the transmission of manuscripts and printed books and the texts they contain through the study of ancient and modern collections and their owners.
Bibliothèques médievales de France (BMF)		Index of catalogues, inventories and various lists of medieval manuscripts (8th-18th centuries).
BUDÉ		The BUDÉ database gathers information on the transmission of ancient and medieval works through manuscripts and ancient printed books for a period covering the end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, understood in a broad sense (up to the middle of the 17th century) and varying according to the country. Much of this information comes from the manual files of the Humanism section at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes.
Collecta, archive numérique de la collection Gaignières (1642-1715)		Collecta aims at virtually reconstructing the collection of François-Roger de Gaignières (1642-1715), which was dispersed between different repositories (Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bodleian Library in Oxford). It is based on the complete inventory of 5,569 items (manuscripts, portfolios of drawings and engravings, prints, paintings and objects) drawn up in 1711, during the antiquarian's lifetime.
Comparatio		Comparatio focusses on the liturgical chants found in medieval Latin manuscripts. It includes not only the text of the liturgical chants, but also the music, transcribed from manuscripts of diverse origins (France, Germany, Italy and Central Europe). This musical database aims to aid in identifying the origin of liturgical manuscripts through the study and comparison both of different versions of antiphons and responsories as well as of their textual variants.
Correspondence during the Renaissance		This correspondence brings to light a great deal of information about the exchange of books between scholars and book collectors. The corpus will be expanded through the study of the most important collections of correspondence, starting with Pellicier, Peiresc, Pierre Daniel, Les Chifflet, Jacques Auguste de Thou, Charles de l’Écluse, Jacques Dalechamps, Pinelli.
Dom Bernard de Montfaucon's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum manuscriptorum nova…		This digital edition will be based on the handwritten notes that were compiled for the collected inventories of manuscript libraries published in 1739. These notes, which are written in different hands, are part of the collections formerly held by the Maurists and contain a great deal of information that is not included in the original printed edition.
E-ktobe		E-ktobe is a database on Syriac manuscripts which provides information on their physical characteristics, colophons and text, as well as manuscript annotations. It contains a great deal of information on people, places and dates concerning the making of Syriac manuscripts.
Extractor		Application to isolate iconographical elements in a manuscript, and compare them from one manuscript to another
Filigranes pour tous		Research project on watermarks on paper in the medieval and modern West and on the processes of their optical shape recognition. The goal is to create a smartphone application that allows you to take a photo of a watermark, download it and obtain its description, through an image-identification system.
Gloss-e		Glossae Scripturae Sacrae-electronicae, a portal dedicated to the study of biblical gloss and commentary in the Middle Ages. The core component of the project is a digital edition of the Glossa ordinaria based on the Editio Princeps, an incunable printed in Strasbourg between 1480 and 1481.
Humanist Hands		This corpus of humanist autograph manuscripts will be digitised, with a particular emphasis on Libri amicorum (books of friends) that contain numerous handwriting samples. They will then be used in the development and configuration of an image comparison tool to identify the scribes and annotators of old books.
Index of Greek Manuscripts Inventories		The Greek section at the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes is indexing the booklists of Greek libraries known to have existed before the fall of Constantinople, which are much less well-known than their Latin counterparts.
Initiale		Maintained by the "Section des manuscrits enluminés" at the IRHT since 1990, this online catalogue lists the illuminated manuscripts held in French public collections (except those of the Bibliothèque nationale de France).
Inventories and Catalogues of Ecclesiastical Libraries (1789-1797)		Description and digitization of inventories and catalogues of ecclesiastical libraries (1789-1797) in the Virtual Inventory Room of the Archives nationales (shelfmarks : F/17/1168-F/17/1179/B).
Jonas		This online database was launched in 2002 and aims to build up an index of medieval texts and manuscripts in Occitan and the langues d’oïl, in addition to providing a tool for the in-depth study of hagiographical manuscripts.
Library of Charles V and Charles VI of France		This research project, begun in 2007, is an important contribution to all studies on the library of the kings of France, and on the flourishing of libraries among the laity in general. The project intends to digitise and publish as a critical edition the inventory lists of the king's library. Further data on the manuscripts themselves and the texts they contain are also collected.
Medieval manuscripts and Catalogues from the Abbey of Saint-Bertin		Edition, analysis and digitization of the catalogs of the abbey of Saint-Bertin, as well as 577 medieval and 16th century manuscripts coming from its library, and today held at the libraries of Saint-Omer and Boulogne-sur-Mer. The digitized manuscripts and printed books are accessible on the digital library of the Communauté d'Agglomération du Pays de Saint-Omer" (CAPSO).
Minims and Oratorians		The Order of the Minims and the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri each built up impressive libraries. The systematic analysis of the Minims' archives aids in understanding the evolution of their libraries and the circulation of texts in their historical context. As regards the Oratorians, a teaching congregation, research will focus on their libraries in Paris and elsewhere in France.
Online Library of the Dominicans of Toulouse		Project to digitise and catalogue all the medieval manuscripts and incunabula from the ancient library of the Dominicans of Toulouse, and to publish the archives describing the library. The data is accessible in Rosalis, the digital library of Toulouse.
Pinakes		This database provides information on the manuscript tradition of pre-sixteenth century Greek texts. The project began in 1971 at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto; in 1993 the Greek section at the IRHT took over its management and continues to enrich it with new data to this day.
Private libraries and book circulation under the Ancien Régime		Corpus of inventories and catalogues of ecclesiastical libraries of the Ancien Régime (14th-18th centuries) digitised and described in the Archives nationales' online catalogue.
Rabelais FORSE Project		The FOnds Rabelais et ses Sources En ligne project (Rabelais's Collection and its Sources Online) has several aims: reconstructing Rabelais's library, editing a small corpus of his correspondence, and digitising books that Rabelais once owned and annotated. The manuscript of his Cinquième livre will also be made available online.
Rediscovering the Manuscripts from Chartres		Digitization of medieval manuscripts held by the Médiathèque of Chartres in order to reconstruct this lost medieval library. The documentary corpus concerns an exceptional collection of manuscripts including many Carolingian manuscripts.
RegeCart - Regesta of cartularies		The RegeCart database gives access to onomastic indexes drawn from 571 cartularies, chronicle-cartularies and bullaries (primarily from the provinces of Rheims and Sens) that were studied by the IRHT's Diplomatic section between 1942 and 1970. It also includes reproductions of the analyses of the individual acts in each cartulary and codicological descriptions of the cartularies.
Reliures.bnf.fr		Database of digitised bindings at the BnF, presenting a selection of bindings that are representative of the history of bookbinding in France. When launched in April 2013, it listed approximately 200 bindings, including many emblematic "treasures" from the collections of the Réserve des livres rares at the BnF (16th to 18th centuries).
Sanderus electronicus		A digital edition of the Bibliotheca belgica manuscripta by Antonius Sanderus, which contains the collected historical inventories of manuscripts in Belgium and France, published in 1641-1644.
Sermones.net		Corpus of digital editions of sermons. The CIHAM has developed its expertise in oral traditions that have later been set down in writing through the digital edition of Jacobus de Voragine's sermons.
Sorbonne Project		The data gathered from this corpus of old inventories and preserved manuscripts makes it possible to reconstruct the different collections that were once held at the Library of the Sorbonne College and trace their history. The data will be added to the Bibale database and the inventories will be published online as a digital critical edition.
SourcEncyMe		The SourcEncyMe project (Sources des Encyclopédies Médiévales) focusses on the history and transmission of Greek, Arabic and Latin texts on philosophy, science, theology and history, which were included in Latin encyclopaedic compilations from the 13th century onwards.
Telma		Telma (Traitement électronique des manuscrits et des archives) provides the scientific community with access to corpora of primary sources and the finding aids necessary to manipulate and study them. It contains two kinds of corpora: resource indexes and critical editions of manuscript sources, which may or may not be linked to digital images of the documents.
Thecae		Electronic collection of ancient inventories of manuscripts and printed books, published by the Presses universitaires de Caen (PUC), defined and implemented within the framework of Biblissima.
Virtual Library of Clairvaux		The Virtual Library of Clairvaux allows the consultation of surviving manuscripts of the medieval library of Clairvaux as it was in 1472, fully digitized in color, and offers articles and self-training files aimed primarily at students and researchers.
Virtual Library of Medieval Manuscripts (BVMM)		The Virtual Library of Medieval Manuscripts allows to consult the reproduction of a large selection of manuscripts, from the Middle Ages to the 16th century.