Medieval cartulary manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland

This article surveys the cartularies held by the National Library of Scotland, considering both their history as a collection and their nature as individual manuscripts. Like many kinds of medieval manuscript, cartularies could take a diverse range of forms. Each one has its own particular characteristics, meaning that as a ‘corpus’ they are difficult to describe or define. In attempting to understand medieval cartulary manuscripts, a tension emerges between the singular term ‘cartulary’ and the variety exhibited by the manuscripts themselves. This uneasy contrast can, however, be reconciled once the cartulary is embraced as a modern scholarly concept rather than a medieval ‘category’