Studies in Art & Materiality10 The Digital Medieval Manuscript

This book offers a reflection on what it means to digitise medieval manuscripts. It examines the digital medieval manuscript as a distinct material object, exploring its complexities in relation to its parchment counterpart and reflecting on how digitisation shapes the ways we encounter, perceive, and engage with cultural heritage. We increasingly encounter medieval books as digital facsimiles—zooming in on high-resolution images, clicking through virtual pages, or engaging with interactive displays. But what actually happens when a parchment manuscript is translated into a digital object? How does this change affect our understanding of cultural heritage? This book explores the digital medieval manuscript as a unique cultural artifact, not just a copy of its physical counterpart. Through three case studies, it reveals how digital manuscripts function in libraries, museums, and scholarship today. Blending manuscript studies with digital humanities, it offers a fresh materialist approach to the discourse surrounding the digitisation of cultural heritage and provides a nuanced view of how it shapes the way we perceive, handle, and preserve medieval manuscripts in an increasingly digital world.