Fribourg/Freiburg, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire/Kantons- und Universitätsbibliothek
Fribourg's Cantonal and University Library owns a significant collection of manuscripts dating from the Middle Ages to the present day, archival holdings and incunabula. This collection comes primarily from the religious communities of Fribourg that were dissolved in 1848, notably from the Cistercians of Hauterive, from the Augustinian Hermits and the Jesuits of St. Michael in Fribourg, and from the Carthusians of La Part-Dieu. The collection includes 185 medieval manuscripts. Over time the collection was significantly expanded through purchases and donations, such as the manuscripts from the Capuchin Convent and those of the Société de lecture (formerly Société économique). The library’s website offers a complete and detailed presentation.
Paper manuscript containing the Parallel Lives of Plutarch in latin translation. The first page features a golden initial on a background of white vine stem decoration, as well as a coat of arms in the bottom margin, perhaps that of Guiniforte Zazzi, Pavia professor of law; on the sides of the coat of arms can be read the name of Peter Falck (†1519), the Fribourg humanist through whom the manuscript reached Fribourg before becoming part of the library of the Capuchins, and, in 2004, of the University Library.
Online Since: 10/04/2011
The liturgical content of this manuscript corresponds to that in use among the Carthusians. The church consecration festival listed in the Proprium de Sanctis between the feast days on the 4th and the 23rd of April probably refers to the 18th of April, when this holiday was celebrated at La Lance. This observation suggests that the manuscript was created in the Carthusian Monastery La Lance (Canton of Vaud). Several ex-libris can be dated around 1500 and confirm the presence of this codex in the monastery, at least until its dissolution in 1538. Then the manuscript was passed on to the Carthusian Monastery Part-Dieu in the Canton of Fribourg. Recently the manuscript was restored and the old binding was replaced.
Online Since: 03/19/2015
This collection of hagiographical texts was written by various hands in the second third of the 13th century, probably in Hauterive. The presence of certain texts indicates a Cistercian origin (Vita of St. Robert of Molesme, the author Geoffroy de Hautecombe) and, based on our knowledge of medieval Hauterive, a regional origin (the Vita of St. Theodore, Bishop of Sion; the Vita and the Miracula of Saint Nicholas of Myra; the Vita of St. Elizabeth of Hungary; the Passio of Saint Maurice and his companions by Eucherius of Lyon). The end of the book contains a collection of texts related to confession. The last one of these attests a little know activity of the monks: the pastoral care of the Cistercian nuns. The manuscript remains in its original cover which, although damaged, is still well recognizable: a cover with wide flaps that cover the edges of the book.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
In addition to various Formulae epistolarum, this manuscript contains the Summa dictaminis by Johannes Wrantz (ff. 1r-126r), excerpts from the Viaticus dictandi by Nicolaus of Dybin (ff. 138v-140r) and a song, partly with musical notation, in Middle High German perhaps by Neidhart of Reuental (ff. 144v-145r), one of the best known German minnesingers. At an unknown later time, probably at the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century, the manuscript became part of the Cantonal und University Library of Fribourg (BCU/KUB).
Online Since: 03/19/2015
A breviary for the diocese of Lausanne preceded by a psalter. The different parts of the text are introduced by illuminated initials produced in an archaic manner. According to a note at the end of the text, the codex was produced by Magister Gilles around 1400 at the behest of Pierre Frenscher of Montagny, parish priest of Saint Nicholas of Fribourg. Another note records a donation by Frenscher for the altar of Saint Sylvester in the church of Saint Nicholas in Fribourg.
Online Since: 10/04/2011
James of Voragine’s Golden Legend, one of the most copied texts of the Middle Ages, appears here in a meticulous fourteenth-century copy. This copy is particularly noteworthy for its exceptional elegance and the refined stitchwork that fixes defects in the parchment (holes and tears); they bring to mind similar works from the double convent of canons and canonesses at Interlaken. The decoration resembles the output of a Zurich workshop. Little is known of the early history of the manuscript, but it as attested in the Cistercian monastery of Hauterive from at least the seveneenth century.
Online Since: 03/31/2011
Few works of antiquity had as profound an influence on the Middle Ages as did Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae. This exemplar contains valuable information which allows it to be placed in an interesting historical context. The Fribourg cleric Pierre Guillomin finished copying the manuscript on Christmas Eve 1447 in Dijon. The colophon, which states these details, also names the recipient of the manuscript, Jacques Trompettaz († 1503), a compatriot of the copyist. The latter was careful to include in several passages of the text, in addition to his own name and that of the addressee, the names of two more Fribourg friends, Claude de Gruyère and Jacques Sutz, Monk at Hauterive.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
The Liber ordinarius is a liturgical text that describes the ceremonies for every day and for holidays for a certain cathedral or for a certain collegiate or monastery church. In this case it is a Liber for Augustinian Hermits; according to a note on f. 63v-64r, it was written by Brother Georius Vituli from the Convent of the Augustinian Heremits in Freiburg in Breisgau. It contains various sermons, instructions and a treatise on the Ten Commandments in German. At some unknown time, the text passed from Freiburg in Breisgau to the Augustinian Convent of Fribourg (Switzerland).
Online Since: 03/19/2015
This manuscript contains a complete monastic breviary. The decoration consists of red, blue and green initials with additional pen and ink drawings of floral, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic motifs. Several initials on the first pages (ff. 8-11) were framed on a gold background, probably at a later time. Of French origin, this breviary was used in Payerne from the 12th century on; after the secularization of the priory, it passed into private ownership.
Online Since: 12/14/2017
This voluminous paper manuscript contains the sermons de tempore and de sanctis for the summer part, several hagiographic texts and exempla. The manuscript might have originally been from Zurich and was the property of the library of the Augustinian Hermits in Fribourg before it came to the Cantonal Library of Fribourg in 1848.
Online Since: 12/14/2018
The manuscript contains primarily the Sermones quadragesimales by the Dominican Jacobus da Varagine. It is from the same scriptorium as Cod. L 34 with the Legenda aurea by the same author, and it shows the same kind of repair to parchment damage, carried out with colored threads. This type of repair can also be found in similar execution from the Augustinian double monastery of Interlaken. The origin of the manuscript remains unknown, but it is attested to have been in the possession of the Cistercians of Hauterive since the 17th century.
Online Since: 06/18/2020
Breviary for use in the diocese of Lausanne. Additions to the calendar attest that this manuscript was used in a Dominican monastery in Lausanne from the 14th century on. The decoration consists of initials with mostly floral ornamentation and drolleries in the margins. This codex was heavily trimmed when it was rebound in the 18th century.
Online Since: 12/14/2017
This small volume contains an anti-Jewish treatise which is said to have been written in Arabic towards the end of the 11th century by Rabbi Samuel de Fez, who converted to Christianity. In 1339 it was translated into Latin by the Spanish Dominican Alfonso Buenhombre. Since no Arabic version of this text is known, it seems that Buenhombre himself is in fact the author. Today, about 300 manuscripts with this text are known, in addition to numerous translations and editions. The origin of this copy is unknown, but it has been in Hauterive since at least the 18th century.
Online Since: 06/18/2020
This Cistercian manuscript, datable to the first half of the 13th century, contains only a part of the Old Testament, that is, the Books Isaiah to and including Malachi. This book must have changed libraries for historical reasons. After being held in the Cistercian Abbey Frienisberg in the Canton of Bern, it reached Hauterive when the Bernese Monastery was dissolved during the Protestant Reformation. The last Abbot of Frienisberg, Urs Hirsinger, is said to have arrived at the Fribourg Abbey with a handful of manuscripts.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
A psalter-hymnal produced for use by Dominicans. The saints recorded in the calendar indicate the codex’s point of origin as a Dominican convent in Southern Germany or Bohemia. The decorative style of the illuminated initials and filigrees, above all, indicate Bohemian origin and an origination date in the first half of the 15th century (new information provided by Martin Roland, Vienna).
Online Since: 10/04/2011
This quaestio disputata by the Augustinian Johannes of Paltz (around 1445-1511) is a perfect illustration of the working methods of medieval scholasticism. The manuscript was written in Erfurt in the summer of 1486 and has as its topic the refutation of three errors. The first regards those who claim “to be able to calculate and foresee the Last Judgment.” It seems that this document is the only handwritten version of this text, which is known through two printed editions from the 15th century. Franz Xaver Karker (1812-1892), Canon of the Cathedral of Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland), donated this work to the Fribourg library.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
Probably written around 1200 in Hauterive, this Cistercian missal has recently attracted the attention of historians who study St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231). Together with another manuscript from Hauterive, the antiphonary L 301, this manuscript is considered evidence of the rapid spread of the cult of the saint in a Cistercian monastery. Indeed, the general chapter of the Cistercians decided in 1236 to have the name of the saint, who was canonized the previous year, entered into the martyrology and into the calendar of the order. The corresponding entry in our manuscript’s calendar, by a second hand, is probably a consequence of this decision.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
This manuscript contains predominantly hagiographical texts, written in various hands at the beginning of the 13th century. One could reasonably propose that it originated at Hauterive. Without doubt, the text at the beginning of the collection was most important for the monks, a Vita of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (the Vita prima), which takes up the greatest part of the manuscript. Also worth noting is a text quite surprising in a monastic context: the Liber locorum sanctorum terrae Jerusalem at the time of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem by Fretellus of Nazareth († after 1154). Another particularity of the manuscript is its binding with flaps that show traces of metalwork in the shape of a star.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
The colophon at the end of the manuscript establishes with certitude that it was copied at the Cistercian abbey of Hauterive during the thirteenth century. Its author, or the one who commissioned the work, dobutless wanted to “gather together the works of two Cistercian authors who exercised important functions in the region: Henry, Abbot of the neighboring monastery of Hautcrêt, and Amadeus, bishop of the diocese of Lausanne” (from Ciardo). Henry, whose biography is still a subject of debate, chose the learned title Pentaconthamonadius (“the fifty-first”) to designate a sermonary composed of 17 groups of three sermons intended for the liturgy of the White monks. Amadeus of Clermont, a Cistercian monk who became bishop of Lausanne (1145-1159), is the author of eight homilies in honor of the Mother of God, which achieved lasting success as liturgical texts because used in the breviary of the diocese of Lausanne.
Online Since: 03/31/2011
This Cistercian missal, produced around 1300, “represents an already advanced phase in the development of this type of liturgical book: the chants of the gradual are completely integrated into the sacramentary, and are no longer accompanied by musical notes; moreover, they are written in a smaller script. In this form, the missal could have served the celebrant for both the conventual mass and for the private mass that Cistercians are known to have held since their origins. The geographical origin of the codex has not been determined with certainty. Without doubt, however, from the fifteenth century onward it was at Hauterive, where it was re-bound. The rich decoration in the canon section provide a fine example of fleuronné initials from the end of the thirteenth century; here, the decoration of the scrolls seems to be still “domesticated” by rigorous framing.” (Joseph Leisibach, Liturgica Friburgensia. Des Livres pour Dieu, 1993, p. 89).
Online Since: 03/31/2011
The work „Die vierundzwanzig Alten“ constitutes a sort of guide to Christian life, and, at the time of its composition, the author, Otto von Passau, belonged to the Franciscan convent of Basel. This copy was written in the second half of the 15th century in a dialect used in the upper Rhine region. Unfortunately, the spaces for illustrations at the beginning of the 24 speeches have been left blank.
Online Since: 10/04/2011
This manuscript contains a collection of computistic and astronomical texts, as well as medical recipes in German (Alemannic) and Latin. Among the identified texts there are excerpts from the Buch der Natur by Konrad von Megenberg. Spaces intended for decorations and perhaps for illustrations have remained blank.
Online Since: 06/22/2017
This late 13th century manuscript contains the part of the medieval bestseller Lancelot en prose that was given the provisional name of Agravain, for the Knight of the Round Table who revealed the illegitimate relationship between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. This simple, neat copy, with gaps at the beginning and end, was decorated with alternating blue and red filigree initials. It is of unknown origin and has been attested in Hauterive since the 18th century.
Online Since: 06/18/2020
This small but extensive (198 ff.) prayer book is written in a variant of North German (Middle Low German). In accordance with the female form in many of the prayers, it was intended for a woman. With the exception of one full-page miniature depicting Christ as the gardener before Mary Magdalene (Noli me tangere), all illuminations have been removed. An ex-libris on the front pastedown informs us that this small manuscript was a gift to the Fribourg Library in 1891 from Franz Xaver Karker, canon of Wroclaw Cathedral.
Online Since: 10/08/2020
This document contains the cartulary and the tribute register of the Cluniac priory of Rüeggisberg in the canton of Bern, which was the first Cluniac priory in the German-speaking area and probably the oldest monastery in the Bernese area. The manuscript consists of two different parts, which were probably joined together in Bern at the beginning of the 16th century, or in 1484, when the priory was abolished and its assets were incorporated into the newly founded St. Vincent monastery of Bern. The first part (ff. 1-200 and 261-267) contains transcriptions made between 1425-1428 of various documents and bulls, and of the priory’s register of tributes, which in turn had been copied from even older cartularies. The second part (ff. 201-260) contains documents copied from the collegiate monastery of St. Vincent in Bern.
Online Since: 10/08/2020
A fragmentary gradual for the friars of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Haugustine, copied in 1539 by Jacobus Frank, who is depicted in the bottom margin of 51r. It contains many illuminations with coats-of-arms, mottos and monograms written by different hands from 1538 to 1594. Some of the illuminations have been excised and in some cases then glued back in the codex.
Online Since: 10/04/2011
This manuscript, copied in an unknown location during the first half of the fourteenth century, provides a beautiful example of a Cistercian antiphony with notes (only the Proprium de tempore is preserved here): an elegant script with widely spaced lines facilitates readability, the musical notes, in square notation, are organized according to a four-line system, and the text is richly decorated with fleuronné initials and droleries. Fragments from a twelfth-century Bible are bound into the beginning of the manuscript and are valuable witnesses for paleographical study of the earliest manuscripts produced by the Cistercians of Hauterive.
Online Since: 03/31/2011
Cistercian capitulary for the nuns of Fille-Dieu Abbey in Romont. In addition to the martyrology and the necrology, the manuscript contains the Rule of Benedict in French. The text was probably written at the Abbess's request and copied by Uldry Charbodat, the priest of Romont, who describes his work in a poem. In it he confirms that he received the parchment from Catherine de Billin (f. 107r). The Capuchin Apollinaire Dellion (1822-1899) donated the manuscript to the Fribourg library in 1879.
Online Since: 10/08/2020
This manuscript is composed of four parts. The first part (1-16) is from the 14th century and presents an abridged version of Usuard's martyrology. The second part (17-66), from the beginning of the 14th century, contains, among others, texts by Albertus Magnus and Pseudo-Robert Grosseteste. The third (67-164) and fourth parts (165-258), which can be dated to the 14th and 15th century, contain texts by Vincent of Beauvais and Peter Lombard, as well as legal writings. Before it was purchased by the Cantonal Library of Fribourg in 1900, the manuscript belonged to the clergy of Gruyères.
Online Since: 12/14/2018
A composite codex of paper produced at Fribourg in the first half of the 15th century. In the first part, in addition to some short texts in German, it contains the Cycle de la belle dame sans mercy by Alain de Chartier, Baudet Herenc and Achille Caulier, a French poem in octaves on courtly love written ca. 1424. The second part has a copy of another verse poem by Chartier: Le Livre des quatre dames.
Online Since: 10/04/2011
This paper manuscript, missing the beginning, contains the French translation of a compendium of the Legenda aurea by Jacobus de Voragine. Numerous ex-libris attest to changes in ownership among various persons in the area around Fribourg, among them Pierre Kämmerling the Elder († 1614) and Jean Muffat de Foncigny, resident in Fribourg (Switzerland).
Online Since: 03/19/2015
This missal from the diocese of Lausanne reflects the contents of manuscript Ms. 7 from the Franciscan monastery of Fribourg. The manuscript is decorated with elegant fleuronné letters in red, blue and green, and the page with the Te igitur is framed by a frieze of flowers with a bird holding a flower in its beak. The opposite side, which probably contained a miniature with the crucifixion, has been cut out. The missal was part of the collection of Karl Friedrich von Steiger (died 1982) and was purchased by the BCU Fribourg in 1991.
Online Since: 10/08/2020
This paper manuscript contains the Fribourg chronicle of the Burgundian Wars in German, inspired by the Kleiner Burgunderkrieg by Diebold Schilling (1477), but from the perspective of Fribourg. This chronicle, which for a long time had been forgotten, is attributed to Peter von Molsheim from Bern, who is to have written it at the behest of the Council of Fribourg. The initials and illustrations were not executed.
Online Since: 12/14/2017
This manuscript contains the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The Samaritan community, an Israelite community that still lives in the West Bank and the Israeli city of Holon, recognizes only these five books as holy scripture. The Hebrew text is written in Samaritan characters and features various cryptograms. One of them contains the name of the copyist, Ya'akov ben Yossef ben Meshalma, who completed his work in the year 901 of the Hegira (1495 AD) in Damascus. Some pages of this neat manuscript have stains (e.g., f. 132r, 170r), which were caused by a special ritual during which the parchment is touched with bare hand. The origin of this manuscript is partly unknown: it was sold in Cairo in 1902 and not until 2000 did it reappear in a private collection, whereupon the Cantonal Library of Fribourg acquired it.
Online Since: 12/10/2020