Mills, Manuscripts and Monastic Archives: The Phillipps Charters of Mont Saint-Michel

Three medieval charters from the Norman abbey of Mont Saint-Michel, preserved in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, offer unprecedented insights into the lost institutional archive of the abbey. Surviving the 1944 destruction of the abbey’s archives, these rare documents reveal the structure and organization of a medieval monastic institution. The study also contextualizes these charters within Sir Thomas Phillipps’ extensive antiquarian collection, shedding light on antiquarian practices of preserving and presenting medieval documents—a field that has only recently gained scholarly attention.

Allen, R., & Pohl, B. (2024). Mills, Manuscripts and Monastic Archives: The Phillipps Charters of Mont Saint-Michel. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 100(1), 1–37. https://doi.org/10.7227/bjrl.100.1.1