Anglo-Saxon Penitentials: A Cultural Database Compiled by Allen Frantzen. Penitentials were guides to sins and the penances that a priest assigned for each sin. This site covers the five surviving Old English penitentials (in seven manuscripts, for the fifth to eleventh century. While the database is not searchable, it provides a “cultural” index of terms and keywords that makes browsing the texts easier (such as, for example, animals, children, emotions, death, paganism, and sex: same-sex & auto-eroticism). There is also a User Guide and glossary to help users navigate these manuscripts online.
Cause Papers in the Diocesan Courts of the Archbishop of York The Cause Papers are case records from the ecclesiastical courts of York, c. 1300-1858, deposited in the Borthwick Institute at the University of York. These papers can be searched by type, date of case, the names of individuals involved in the case as witnesses or parties, and places mentioned in the records. In many cases, images of the documents themselves are also available to view online. They include cause papers for over 13,000 individual cases as well as a wealth of supporting materials, an extensive introduction to the genre, and a glossary.
Consistory: Testimony in the Late Medieval London Consistory Court Compiled by Shannon McSheffrey, Concordia University. This is a database of testimonies in the main church court of the diocese of London, an ecclesiastical jurisdiction that included the city of London itself and large portion of its rural hinterland. Disputes about marriage, defamation, sexual offences, debt, the probate of wills, and clerical discipline came before this court. The aim of this online resource is to catalogue and make searchable the surviving medieval (pre-1500) records of litigation in this court (about 1100 depositions and examinations altogether), both in transcription of the original Latin of the documents and in modern English translation.
York’s Archbishops Registers Revealed (Borthwick Institute, University of York) This database compiled at the Borthwick Institute at the University of York provides access to over 20,000 images of the official registers of the Archbishops of York, c. 1225-1650, in addition to a searchable index of names, subjects, places and organizations. For medieval canon law in particular, these registers contain numerous entries of cases that came before the ecclesiastical courts at York.