Limburg Charters

In collaboration with the Limburg Charters Foundation, the Huygens Institute, led by researcher Geertrui van Synghel, is researching and making available 410 original Limburg charters (deeds) from the 11th to 13th centuries. Charter documents are often the only surviving sources from this period and offer crucial insights into political, ecclesiastical and economic processes.

The Limburg Charter Documents are therefore also referred to as ‘backbone sources’, because they are often the only direct witnesses to medieval events, from major disasters with hundreds of deaths to confirmations of donations.

Visit the digital edition via the Waarvan Akte website. Metadata such as transcription, headnotes, date, archive location and a short summary of the content make the documents directly usable for historical research, education and the general public. The translations from Latin are unique. This has never been done before in contemporary critically edited charter books.

Image from f. 137 of L’estoire del Saint Graal (ff. 1-76); L’estoire de Merlin (ff. 76-216). 1200-1400. British Library.