The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies was founded in the 1970s by Profs. John J. Nitti and Lloyd L. Kasten, then professors of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The HSMS is a non-profit entity whose principal aim was to provide access to the masses of transcriptions and data that were being produced as a result of their on-going Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language (DOSL) project.

Since then, the HSMS has grown to become one of the most important publishers of material in Hispanomedievalism and its related fields.

The HSMS is dedicated to publishing at affordable prices scholarly research relative to the early Ibero-Romance languages and literatures.

Books are hard-bound (unless otherwise indicated) and printed on acid-free paper.

Microfiches are of archival quality.