One of the course requirements for my Fall 2002 section of History 111 (Europe to 1715) at The College of William and Mary was to "discover," transcribe and analyze a historical document (or selection of a longer document) that was not available on the Internet. Some students were particularly resourceful in finding document collections, rare books and microfilms at the Swem Library on campus or in ordering titles via Inter-Library Loan. I have posted some of their documents below. All of them are in the public domain. I have also posted some of the best students' analyses along with their respective documents.
For more about this assignment, click
here.
Three
documents on Roman religion (second century A.D.)
Jordanes
on the conversion of the Goths (551)
Letter
from Pope Gregory II to Emperor Leo III, protesting the emperor's iconoclasm
(c. 727)
"Formulae
Liturgicae" In Use at Ordeals (circa 9th century)
Excerpts
from Charlemagne's General Capitulary for the Missi (802)
Additional
Excerpts from the General Capitulary (802)
Emperor
Henry III Deposes and Creates Popes (1048)
The
Papal Election Decree of Nicholas II (1059)
Letter
of Gregory VII to Henry IV (1073)
Concessions
of Adolf, Count of Nassau, to the Archbishop of Cologne in return for his
vote (1292)
Three
Sixteenth-Century Dispatches from Venetian Ambassadors in London
Francesco
Guicciardini's description of Spain (1513)
Letter
from Pedro Menendez to Philip II (mid-sixteenth century)
Description
of Michaelangelo in Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550)
Act
for the Marriage of Queen Mary to Philip of Spain (1554)
Selections
from Richard Hakluyt, "A Discourse Concerning Western Planting" (1584)
Description
of the People and Country of Scotland, and of the Reception of James I.
in that Country (1617)
Francis
Yeardley’s Narrative of Excursions into Carolina (1654)
An excerpt
from Nathaniel Hodge’s Loimolgia: or, An Historical Account of the Plague
in London in 1665
A
letter from Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, to his father (1689)
A
letter from Louis XIV to Count Tallard, his ambassador in London, on negotiations
with William III over the Spanish succession (1698)
A
letter from Count Tallard, the French ambassador in London, to Louis XIV,
and Louis XIV's reply (1698)
Letter
VII from A. B., The Mystery of Atheism, or, The Devices Made Use of
to Countenance and Propagate it together with the Evil and Danger of Them,
Set Forth in Several Letters to a Friend: Wherein is Made Appear, that
'tis not Want of Evidence, but Sincerity that Makes Men Atheists (London,
1699)