Research Guides: *Religion: Religious Texts Online

Sacred Texts

Internet Sacred Text Archive
Freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric on the Internet.
Buddhism
English translations of key texts, published by University of Pennsylvania.

Digitized Resources

Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative
The CDRI database provides access to digital images of woodcuts, photographs, slides, papyri, coins, maps, postcards, manuscripts, lithographs, sermons, shape-note tune books, and various forms of Christian art, architecture, and iconography.
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The CDRI of the American Theological Library Association and Association of Theological Schools is a repository of digital resources contributed by member libraries.
Goodspeed Manuscript Collection
The Edgar J. Goodspeed Manuscript Collection comprises 68 early Greek, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Arabic, and Latin manuscripts ranging in date from the 5th to the 19th centuries. The acquisition of these hitherto unknown manuscripts was spearheaded by Edgar J. Goodspeed in the first half of the twentieth century in order to support new scholarship in the humanities.
Islamic Medieval Manuscripts
Contains a substantial collection of texts held by the University of Birmingham (UK).
Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library
"A free online digitized virtual library of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hundreds of manuscripts made up of thousands of fragments – discovered from 1947 and until the early 1960’s in the Judean Desert along the western shore of the Dead Sea – are now available to the public online."
The Digital Scriptorium
The Digital Scriptorium is a growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It bridges the gap between a diverse user community and the limited resources of libraries by means of sample imaging and extensive rather than intensive cataloguing.

Ancient & Medieval Christianity

Acta Sanctorum This link opens in a new window
The Acta Sanctorum database is an electronic version of the complete printed text of Acta Sanctorum, from the edition published in sixty-eight volumes. The collection of rare documents examines the lives of saints, organized according to each saint's feast day, and runs from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940.
Abbreviation: actasan
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1643–1940
Subjects: History, Literature, Religion
Type: E-Book Collections, Historical / Primary Sources
Patrologia Græca This link opens in a new window
The Patrologia Græca gathers the works of the Greek Fathers from the first century (pseudo-Clement) to 1478 (Calliste), and also all major and minor Greek authors and the most important texts of Christian Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Among the works will be found (in reference editions for many of them): Irenus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, St. John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus Confessor, John Damascene, Georgius Pachymeres, Symeon Metaphrastes and hundreds more.
Abbreviation: cgpatgra
Vendor: Classiques Garnier Numrique
Subjects: Art History, Classics, History, Literature, Philosophy, Religion
Type: Historical / Primary Sources
Patrologia Latina This link opens in a new window
The Patrologia Latina (Latin Church Fathers) Database is an electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1855, and the four volumes of indexes published between 1862 and 1865. The Patrologia Latina comprises the works of the Church Fathers from Tertullian in 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216. The database contains the complete Patrologia Latina, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indexes. Migne's column numbers, essential references for scholars, are included.
Tutorials:
Patrologia Latina Search Tips (PDF)

Abbreviation: patro
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 200–1216
Subjects: History, Religion
Type: E-Book Collections, Historical / Primary Sources
Loeb Classical Library This link opens in a new window
The mission of the Loeb Classical Library, founded by James Loeb in 1911, has always been to make Greek and Latin literature accessible to the broadest range of readers. More than 520 volumes of Latin, Greek, and English texts are available in a modern and elegant interface, allowing readers to browse, search, bookmark, annotate, and share content with ease.
Abbreviation: loeb
Vendor: Harvard University Press
Coverage: 700 BCE–700 CE
Subjects: Classics, History, Literature, Religion, Theatre
Type: E-Book Collections