The Armour Archive

Well, this is embarrassing.

Anyone who has used the BNF's Mandragore website knows that without the exact search string for the various manuscripts, it's hard to get very far.

I know that in the past a few of us have collected lists of manuscript names to put in the "Cote" field for searching images. I can't find my list of MS names. I also can't call it up here using the Search feature on the Archive. I know it's been posted before... probably by Clare de Crecy (Tracy Justus) or Karen, or maybe even me. Argh.

Does anyone have the list handy? If so, can you post it?

-Thanks,
Tasha

The easiest way to search for manuscripts on there is by century in the Date par siècle. For 15th put 15. If you want to limit your search to manuscripts that have images online select " Les images numérisées"
You likely will also want to limit it to "Département des Manuscrits (occidentaux) " or "Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal" unless you want eastern manuscripts as well.

Once you have found an image that has something your interested in you will want to click on "Notice" on the top part of the page. This will give you a listing of the database fields for that image, which can then be taken back to the search engine to search using terms or rubrics or descriptors. As with all things it was limited by the people who made it so two similar things might be called two different words.

Well, you can always just use the search engine on my homepage -- pop in "BNF" and the name of the manuscript you're looking for.

Or ... use Google. Google does a pretty good search on Mandragore. Enter the following into the Google search:

site:mandragore.bnf.fr name of manuscript


or ...

site:mandragore.bnf.fr French word for the thing you're looking for

"Cheat sheet" means "list of manuscript names".

If I had known the name of the manuscript I was looking for, I'd not have posted this post.

However, as Lady Luck would have it, the other topic I've been active on recently enticed you to post the name of the exact manuscript I was looking for. So, I thank you! All is well that ends well.

And Brent -- good tips, thank you!