This manuscript was written in a flowing fourteenth-century textualis and decorated with rubrics and red lombards. The same hand has numbered the quires in red ink, in the bottom-right corner at the beginning of each quire: II (p. 23) to XXXIX (p. 731). The pagination contains a significant error: 1–501, 511–742; pp. 614–615 are empty. The manuscript transmits the winter part of a breviary, namely (pp. 1-559) the Proprium de tempore from the first Sunday of Advent to Pentecost and Trinity, as well as (pp. 559–742) the Proprium de sanctis from the feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle (30 November) to the feast of Saint Pancras (12 May), including the feast of Saint Wiborada (pp. 716-725). The manuscript shows no traces of its users nor of any additions. On the final page (p. 742) appears the library stamp of Abbot Diethelm Blarer from 1553–1564. The binding, featuring wooden boards with a red leather cover, dates to the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
Contrary to Scherrer, this missal does not come from the fourteenth century, but rather from the first half of the fifteenth century. In addition to a full-page image of a canon on p. 179, the decoration includes pen-flourished initials (p. 77b, 413a, 434a etc.) as well as outlined, but not completed, zoomorphic and historiated initials. Thus, for example, on p. 12a for Christmas there appears an initial in the form of a dragon enclosing a Nativity scene and, on p. 92a, for the Dedicatio huius monasterii, an initial with a man in a tree. Notable are the numerous sequences that the missal contains. According to the possessor's note on p. 1, Sanctorum Iohannis Baptiste et Evangeliste, the manuscript was held by the Abbey of St. John in Thurtal since at least the eighteenth century.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
This extensive parchment manuscript was written in the fourteenth century in textualis. Red and blue lombards, rubrics, and red abbreviations adorn the two-column text; occassional red and blue pen-flourished initials emphasize particularly important parts of the breviary and its feasts. The breviary begins (p. 1a) with Easter-eve vespers (that is, on Good Saturday) and ends (pp. 807a–817b) with the feast of Saint Conrad (26 November). There then follows (pp. 817b–819b), as additions, a lection In nocte sancte Anne and four lections In divisione apostolorum, written in the same hand as before (cf. p. 433b, p. 457b). Finally the added rubric Passio sancti Placidi martyris, sociorum eius 35 martyrum prima [?] lectio [?] is written in another, later-fifteenth-century hand. Among the saints feasts occur those of Gallus (p. 662a) and its octave (p. 708a) as well as of Otmar (p. 759b) and its octave (p. 789b). On p. 666 appears the library stamp of Abbot Diethelm Blarer from the period 1553–1564. The wooden-board binding dates to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Its leather binding is adorned with scroll stamps. The original clasps and fittings are missing. On the inside of the front and back boards can be seen offsets from detached flyleaves, as well as from fragments with writing that were pasted in. Two paper leaves (pp. A-D) and one paper leaf (pp. Y-Z) have been inserted and bound in before and after the parchment book block, respectively. The pagination is faulty: A–D, 1–155, 155a, 156–433, 435–621, 623–819, Y–Z.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
This breviary contains the Psalter (pp. 1a–111b) followed by cantica, Pater noster, Credo, Quicumque vult and litanies (pp. 111b–129b), as well as the Proprium de tempore (pp. 130a-533a) from the first Sunday of Advent to the 25th Sunday after Trinity, including the Dedicatio ecclesiae (p. 524a) and finally the Proprium de sanctis (pp. 534a-839b) and the Commune sanctorum (pp. 840a-841b), which breaks off at the end of the last page and is incomplete. The manuscript was written in a fourteenth-century textualis and decorated with numerous red and blue pen-flourished initials. The only highlighted name in the Litany is that of Catherine (p. 125a); this fact, along with the feasts of St. Peter of Verona (p. 632a), the Translatio sancti Dominici (p. 647b, 648a), St. Dominic (death day) (p. 709a) and Saint Catherine (p. 828b, 830b) indicate that the breviary was intended for the Dominican convent of St. Catherine, probably the one in St. Gall (and later in Wil). The seventeenth-century ownership mark Monasteriae [!] s. Catharinae, written in the same hand as, for example, Wil, Dominikanerinnenkloster St. Katharina, M 3, front flyleaf, proves that the breviary actually comes from the convent. The leather cover on the wooden-board binding is decorated with a stamp with the head of Christ as well as with a scroll stamp, and has the blind-stamped date 1591 on the front.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
This paper manuscript contains short readings (capitula), collects (collectae), prayers, hymns, antiphons, and responsories for the office throughout the year, including the common of Saints. Probably in the fourteenth century, this “extended collectar” was written in a flowing textualis and then rubricated. In many places, the manuscript shows heavy traces of use in the form of worn, browned margins. On p. 25 can be found the library stamp of Abbot Diethelm Blarer from 1553–1564. The wooden-board binding dates to the fourteenth or fifteenth century. On the inner boards can be seen offsets of Hebrew fragments.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
This small volume contains liturgical fragments. They come from six different manuscripts (overwhelmingly breviaries/psalters), of which sometimes multiple leaves, sometimes only a few lines survive. The first fragment (ff. 12r-34v) is written in Latin, but has German rubrics, which suggests a breviary for private use. As a note on f. Ar in his own hand indicates, Ildefons von Arx likely assembled this volume.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
This tiny psalter, which was written for a Dominican Convent, begins with a fragmentary calendar (ff. Er-Iv; one leaf, containing the months of January and February, has been removed). After the Psalms (ff. 1r-182v) there follows the Old and New Testament Cantica (ff. 183r-193r) and the Athanasian Creed Quicumque vult (ff. 193r–194v) as well as a fifteenth-century addition of a litany (ff. Ur–Wr). Red and blue initials, some with pen-flourishes, make up the book's ornamentation. The flyleaves come from older recycled parchment, and the pastedowns are made up of fragments from a fifteenth-century charter. Since Catherine of Siena does not appear in the calendar, the psalter likely was produced before 1460. The manuscript was in the Abbey Library by the eighteenth century at the latest.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
This breviary was written in bastarda by a single hand, probably belonging to a choir monk of the Abbey of St. Gall. In addition to the usual parts of a full breviary (Calendar, Psalterium feriatum, Proprium de tempore [incomplete], Proprium de sanctis and Commune sanctorum), it also contains Marian prayers, the liturgy for compline and the vigil of the dead, a Cursus B. M. V., suffrages, and further prayers.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
On 974 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from April 1560 to April 1571. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
On 300 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from April 1571 to October 1574. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
On 488 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from November 1574 to November 1582. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
On 588 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from October 1582 to March 1591. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
The first part of this volume (pp. 1-214) contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from April 1591 to April 1597. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the region prior to its division. The second part (pp. 215-528) includes drafts of outgoing letters and copies of incoming ones from 1659 to 1687. Starting with p. 529, the pages have been torn and at most fragments remain.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
Produced in the thirteenth century, this Psalter shows evidence of heavy use. An “instructions for use” found on the back pastedown calls for the Psalter to be left in the choir so that every sister can read it. Thus, the Psalter came from a convent of women. Since St. Catherine is particularly emphasized in the calendar, it could have belonged to the convent of Dominican women of St. Catherine in St. Gall. Decoration consists of red and blue pen-flourished initials. In addition, the liturgical eight-part division as well as the three-part division of the Psalter are highlighted with larger painted initials, which are partially adorned with silver and gold ink. Following the Psalms, starting on p. 240, are the biblical Cantica, Credo, Te Deum, Symbolum Athanasianum and a litany. A few leaves were replaced in the fifteenth and fourteenth/fifteenth century (pp. 95–98, 257–264). Two quires of a breviary in the same hand as pp. 257–264 are bound to the litany (pp. 269–288). In the same hand, an incomplete calendar (July to December) with names of the month in German precedes the Psalter (pp. 1–12). Originally the calendar probably consisted of two quires, of which only the last leaf of the first quire and the complete second quire remain. On the front pastedown is glued the bookplate of Prince-Abbot Beda Angehrn (abbot 1767-1796).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The codex contains the Pauline Epistles with three prologues to the Letter to the Romans (Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, Nr. 650, 674, and 677; p. 1), the Glossa ordinaria, and further glosses. The Letter to the Hebrews ends at Hebr. 4:16. The manuscript, bound in a Romanesque binding, was probably written towards the end of the twelfth century. It is not clear whether it was produced in St. Gall.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
This missal was most likely written for the Grossmünster of Zürich (from a comparison with the Grossmünster's Liber Ordinarius); it contains the proprium de tempore, proprium de sanctis (with the major feasts of Zürich), commune sanctorum and votive masses. The chants are written in smaller letters throughout, but only on a few pages do they appear together with melodies in neumatic notation. The canon missae (pp. 73–83) begins with a simple drawing of a canon. With that exception, the decoration is limited to at most two-line red lombards.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
According to the particularly venerated saints in the calendar (pp. 6–17, the months are in the wrong order), this missal, written on fine parchment, belonged to a convent of Dominican women dedicated to St. Agnes. The canon missae (pp. 193–204) is introduced by a high-quality drawing, whose similarity to the depictions of the crucifixion in the Dominican convent of Constance has been emphasized in the art-historical literature. But it is unlikely that the manuscript was produced in the Diocese of Constance, since, among others, Gallus and Otmar are missing from the calendar; rather, the calendar points to a Strasbourg provenance. The missal is richly decorated with red and blue pen-flourished initials. On p. 18 there is an Exorcismus salis et aquae; following the Commune sanctorum there appear votive masses (pp. 426–446) and sequences (pp. 447–461). The manuscript was in St. Gall since the sixteenth or seventeenth century at the latest (possession note on p. 5).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Probably produced in Paris, this pocket Bible contains the Old Testament with 16 of Jerome's prologues to the individual Biblical books. At least five leaves (from 1 Macc. 4: 38) have been torn out of the end. The exceptionally fine and thick parchment is of extremely high quality. The pages feature continuous red-and-blue column headings and chapter numbers. The ornamentation consists of pen-flourished and painted initials, a few of which have figurative scenes: p. 9 (Hexaemeron), p. 137 (Moses), p. 435 (David with Harp), p. 446 (David), p. 450 (fool), p. 470 (David), p. 482 (Solomon). In the Psalms, the liturgical eight-part division of the psalters is particularly emphasized through painted initials.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The manuscript contains Anselm of Laon's († 1117) commentary on the Psalms (the author's identity is according to Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, Nr. 1357; elsewhere the text is ascribed to a certain Haimo). On pp. 245–253, the manuscript continues with a commentary on the little doxology as well as on the Old Testament cantica for Lauds, which were authored either also by Anselm or by his student Gilbert of Poitiers († 1155) (Stegmüller, RB 1357, 1 or 2530). A few pages contain longer marginal glosses. Decoration is limited to two- to three-line red lombards and sparse rubrication. On p. 254 can be found the library stamp from the time of Abbot Diethelm Blarer (1553–1564).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The codex, written in a single hand (p. 236: two hexameters naming the scribe Cuonradus), contains primarily sermons for the entire ecclesiastic year (pp. 1–236: sermones de tempore, pp. 239–285: sermones de sanctis). From p. 287 onwards are added a few chapters from the Liber miraculorum of Herbert of Clairvaux († ca. 1198). Decoration is limited to at most three-line red Lombard initials.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
This small manuscript contains the Apocalypse commentary of Anselm of Laon, who died in 1117 (Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, no. 1371). Except for a four-line red lombard at the begnning of the text, there is no decoration present. On p. 50 can be found the library stamp from the abbacy of Diethelm Blarer (1553–1564).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
In a binding from the time of Abbot Ulrich Rösch (1463–1491), the manuscript has two parts. The first (pp. 3–166), written probably in southern Germany towards the end of the twelfth century, contains approximately the last third of Peter Lombard's († 1160) commentary on the Psalms (on Ps. 109–150). The second part (pp. 167–308) was produced in the thirteenth century, perhaps in St. Gall, and contains sermons and treatises, overwhelmingly by Bernard of Clairvaux († 1153). In addition to a few of Bernard's large liturgical sermons, there appear a few of uncertain authenticity, such as six sermons by Nicholas of Clairvaux († after 1175). The sermons on pp. 167–292 are ordered according to the ecclesiastical calendar (de tempore and de sanctis). A sermon from Bernard's Sermones de diversis is here applied to the feast of St. Gall (pp. 268–270). On pp. 292–298 can be found the second half of Bernard of Clairvaux's treatise De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae; a few chapters, especially the first and last, are heavily abridged. The final pages (pp. 298-308) contain further short sermons and treatises, at least part of which can be ascribed to Bernard.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The manuscript is bound in a cardboard binding of the eighteenth/nineteenth century. It has two parts written at different times. The first part (pp. 3–120) begins with a fragmentary gradual (it starts on the Wednesday after the Third Sunday in Advent), written in the thirteenth century. The melodies are noted in staffless neumes. Following the Sundays after Pentecost, the part concludes with alleluia-verses (pp. 118–120). The second part (pp. 121–186), containing sequences without melodies, comes from the fourteenth century. In two parts of the codex is bound a quire from a gradual probably written in the thirteenth/fourteenth century: pp. 11–26 (in the middle of the introitus to the feast of the Holy Innocents), the propers for the first Sunday of Advent to the first Sunday after Christmas; pp. 159–174 (in the middle of the All Saints' sequence), the chants for the period from the Wednesday after the first Sunday of Lent to Holy Saturday.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
This breviary, which is missing its end, contains the proprium de tempore from the first Sunday of Advent through Saturday after the third Sunday after Easter (pp. 1–384). Then follows the commune sanctorum (pp. 384–386), the proprium de sanctis from Tiburtius and Valentianus (April 14) to Primus and Felicianus (June 9), and then the proprium de tempore continues from the fourth Sunday after Easter. The breviary cuts off in the middle of the fifth Sunday after Easter. Since there are only three, and not, as was common in the Benedictine Order, four readings per nocturn on Sundays, the breviary cannot have come originally from the Abbey of St. Gall. The codex, which shows signs of heavy use, is written by several hands on thick parchment with many holes, sometimes with stitches. Several pages are cut below the text-block. The antiphons and responsories appear with staffless neumes, which themselves were written by many hands. The decoration consists of red lombards and initials, including a few zoomorphic ones (p. 172: dragon; p. 217: bird with two heads; p. 231: dragon). Numerous fragments of a late-medieval liturgical manuscript are used as quire-guards.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The manuscript contains the readings for the nocturns of matins, the nightly office, on Sundays, feast days and weekdays. It includes the proprium de tempore from the first of Advent to the end of the ecclesiastical year (including the saints' feasts between Christmas and Epiphany). As the Matutinale does not have four readings per nocturn on Sundays, as was the practice in the Order of Saint Benedict, but only three, it cannot have been originally written for the Abbey of St. Gall. On the margins of p. 233/234 appear numerous additions from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries on the feast of the Trinity. Decoration consists of red lombards and simple initials, partially with incipient pen-flourishes (e.g., p. 75). The parchment has numerous holes, some of which have stitches. Numerous pages are trimmed below the text block. Strips from an eleventh-century liturgical manuscript are bound around the first and last quire of the codex as reinforcement (the back half of the strip around the last quire is paginated as p. 414/415). On the front board appears the offset of a page of a thirteenth-century psalter; on the back board, the offset of an eleventh-century sacramentary (?).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
This volume contains “année après année tout ce qui s'est passé de remarquable dans cet établissement [the Collège de Porrentruy] depuis 1588 à 1771” (p. 1). So reads the title page of this paper manuscript, which moreover provides information on its provenance. Property of the Jesuit priest Voisard (1749-1818), at his death the manuscript was bequeathed to Henri Joliat (1803-1859), who deposited it in 1856 in the library of the Collège de Porrentruy. The text begins in 1588 with the establishment of the Collège directed by the Jesuits; this volume concludes in 1661. The years that follow are treated in a second volume, MP 4-2. These excerpts from the annals are probably the French translation and summary of the volume in Latin in the Jura Cantonal Library (A2597).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
This paper manuscript contains the conclusion of the “Extraits des annales du Collège de Porrentruy” (MP 4-1). It begins in 1662 and ends in 1762, somewhat before what was announced (1771) on the title page of the first volume (MP 4-1, p. 1).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Although this manuscript's paper title page announces “Éphémérides de la ville de Porrentruy, commencées en janvier 1855, Vautrey prêtre” (p. V3), it only refers to the first eight pages of this thick volume (pp. 1-8). The largest part of the work contains “Notes sur l'ancien Évêché de Bâle” (pp. 9-473), followed by excerpts from the “Annales du monastère d'Augiae divitis” (Reichenau) taken from a Latin manuscript that belonged to the Benedictines of Delle (pp. 476-502). Alongside various ecclesiastical functions, this volume's author, Louis Vautrey (1829 Porrentruy – 1886 Delémont) accomplished a significant body of historical work, as witnessed, for example, by the publication in two volumes of the Histoire des évêques de Bâle (1884-1886), which at least in part relies on the current manuscript.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Described by Gustave Amweg as the Mémoires d'un Jurassien, this paper manuscript belonged to the cantonal school of Porrentruy. It contains two distinct parts. The first contains accounts in German, divided according to month, running from 1670 to 1672 (pp. 1-177). The second part (pp. 181-358), written in French, is the diary of a man – not otherwise identified – written in first person, which reports his daily activities (time passed in study, copies of letters, poems, etc.), as well as, among other things, the account of a trip from France to Italy.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Jean Jacques Joseph Nicol, a Porrentruy shoemaker (1733-1822), wrote this diary, which is divided in two parts, the first running from 1760 to 1771 (pp. 7-71), the second from 1795 to 1809 (pp. 73-88), two completely different periods from a political perspective (belonging to the Bishopric of Basel and the French period). This diary's interest lies in Nicol's profession as an artisan, which allows us to see, alongside major historical events, more mundane ones. This manuscript is a copy of Nicol's diary made by Joseph Trouillat (1815-1863) as the label on the cover declares. A teacher at the Collège de Porrentruy, Trouillat was in charge of the library. Undoubtedly, it was in the course of his historical research that he copied this journal, which was printed with the title Notes et remarques de Jean-Jacques-Joseph Nicol (Porrentruy, Société typographique, 1900).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Marcel Moreau (Delémont 1735-1804), the author of this manscript, entered the Cistercian abbey of Lucelle in 1755, teaching theology there, and then at Hauterive, and Neubourg (in Alsace). After refusing to give the constitutional oath during the Revolution (1791), he took refuge in Hauterive, and then was named director of the Cistercian nuns of La Maigrauge. During these years, he wrote memoirs on contemporary events, as attested by this manuscript, which describes what happened between 21 April 1792 (p. 5) and 27 January 1793 (p. 138). The concluding index (pp. 139-150-s2), in chronological order, establishes the correspondence between the events treated on the manuscript's pages and their dates.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The Porrentruy bourgeois and notary François-Joseph Guélat (1736–1825) is the author of the text carried by this manuscript, and is chiefly known for his memoirs on life in Jura during the revolutionary period (cf. MP 15 / A1451-1-3). According to the old pagination and the table of contents, which was probably added at the moment of binding (pp. 169-170), this manuscript is incomplete. The copy is carefully prepared, the single-column text is marked by a pencil-traced frame, and the chapter titles are inked in elegant calligraphy. This is not Guélat's autograph manuscript, but rather a later copy, produced after 1838, as suggested by the date linked to the name of Charles Roedel (the copyist?) enscribed in an inverse pyramid at the end of the list of the bishops of Basel (p. 148).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
According to the preface (pp. 5-8), the Jesuit François-Humbert Voisard (1749-1818) wrote the Abrégé as the first history in French of the bishops of Basel and dedicated it to his students. Entirely focused on the ecclesiastical history of Basel and Porrentruy, the text's structure reveals its pedagogic nature: a short question introduces each chapter, and the text that immediately follows provides a more or less lengthy reply to the question. According to Gustave Amweg's Bibliographie du Jura bernois, Voisard's Abrégé survives in five copies and has not been published to this day. This manuscript has been corrected, annotated, and ends with an index of the bishops and the clerical institutions of the Basel episcopacy (pp. 459-460). Ownership notes inscribed on the front pastedown document its provenance: “Ce livre appartient à Henri Joliat, étudiant en rhétorique. Porrentruy, le 3 mai 1819 / Et / Schwartzlin Père / et /à l'abbé Vautrey à qui il a été remis par M. l'abbé Marquis en 1813”.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
One of the five copies of the Abrégé de l'histoire des évêques de Bâle by the Jesuit, François-Humbert Voisard (1749-1818), a history textbook organized according to questions and responses and dating from 1781. Except for the address of the dedication, the preface of this volume uses nearly the same terms as those in a second copy in the Bibliothèque cantonale jurassienne (MP 10 / A 3269). It differs, however, in lacking annotation and correction. In addition, the copy is incomplete, since it stops suddenly at the beginning of the fourth part, dedicated to the bishops of Basel and of Porrentruy (p. 360). Before coming to the library of the Collège de Porrentruy in 1842, the manuscript belonged to a certain Quiquerez (back pastedown), probably Jean-Georges, mayor and notary of Porrentruy, and then to his son, Auguste (1801-1882), a Jurassien engineer, historian, archeologist, and geologist, as indicated by his ex-libris (p. V1).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The Porrentruy lawyer François-Joseph Guélat (1736-1825) is one of the most well-known chroniclers to have described life in the Jura at the moment of the Revolution. Divided into three manuscript volumes, the text was published in 1906 by B. Boéchat et Fils in Delémont, with the title Journal de François-Joseph Guélat 1791-1802. The first volume starts in 1791 and runs to 1793 (28 July). The year is given at the top of each page, above the left margin, where are mentioned the days and events related to the adjacent text.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The Porrentruy lawyer François-Joseph Guélat (1736-1825) is one of the most well-known chroniclers to have described life in the Jura at the moment of the Revolution. Divided into three manuscript volumes, the text was published in 1906 by B. Boéchat et Fils in Delémont, with the title Journal de François-Joseph Guélat 1791-1802. The second volume starts in 1793 and runs to the end of December 1795. It uses the same layout as the previous volume, which is hardly surprising, since at the beginning they formed a single unit, as shown by the older, continous pagination. Likewise, the long table of contents at the end refers to both volumes (pp. 125-163).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The Porrentruy lawyer François-Joseph Guélat (1736-1825) is one of the most well-known chroniclers to have described life in the Jura at the moment of the Revolution. Divided into three manuscript volumes, the text was published in 1906 by B. Boéchat et Fils in Delémont, with the title Journal de François-Joseph Guélat 1791-1802. The third volume runs from 1796 to 1802, and, like the preceding volume (MP 15 / A1451-2) concludes with a table of contents (pp. 159-177).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
This handy paper manuscript contains the Franciscan Marquard of Lindau's Eucharist treatise. On f. 137r, the copyist, from the second quarter of the fifteenth century, identifies himself as Nicolaus Sinister. The name could be the Latinized version of the contemporary Nikolaus Linck, who served as a priest in Owingen and Urnau on the northern shore of Lake Constance. On the originally blank leaves of the first and last gatherings a later hand has added mystical texts, including a sermon that has only survived in this manuscript and was formerly ascribed to Meister Eckhard (ff. 1v-6v), a spiritual song by Heinrich Laufenberg from the Friends of God (ff. 6v-7v), and the rhyme-legend “Das zwölfjährige Mönchlein” (ff. 139r-148r). The cursive bookhand is adorned with two- to three-line red lombards at the beginnings of chapters. Eichenberger dates the later hand A to the third quarter of the fifteenth century; she recognizes similarities between the later hand B and the manuscript Colmar, Bibliothèque de la ville, Ms. 305, which came from the workshop of Diebold Lauber and can be dated to 1459.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
This large-format paper manuscript containg the German rendition of the Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra's commentary on the Psalter (Postilla super Psalterium) was given to the Stadbibliothek in 1646 by Sebastian Grübel (note of donation, f. 2r). Contrary to what has long been assumed, Heinrich von Mügeln was not responsible for the translation, but rather an anonymous person known to the scientific community as the “Österreichischer Bibelübersetzer” [“Austrian Bible-translator”], who is also deemed the author of the “Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk” (cf. Stadtbibliothek Schaffhausen, Gen. 8). The manuscript, written in northeastern High Alemannic, was copied in a book cursive by at least two hands, probably in southwestern Germany in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. Ornamentation is limited to red lombards, some of which are pen-flourished (f. 178v) and a five-line green leaf and flower initial (fol. 2r).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
On 300 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from February 1540 to February 1544. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
On 366 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from February 1544 to July 1548. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
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On 304 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from July 1548 to April 1551. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
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On 196 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from May 1552 to March 1554. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
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On 164 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from March 1554 to November 1556. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
On 220 paper pages, this volume contains the income and expenditures of the territory of Appenzell from November 1556 to May 1560. These accounts are among the most important sources for researching the history of the yet undivided region.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Carrying on p. 3 the title “Variarum”, this is an undated autograph from the hand of the antistes (head) of the reformed church of Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575). The description “Bullingeri Autographon”on p. 3 comes unequivocally from a second, later hand. In keeping with the title, the contents consist of a collection of notes on various theological themes or loci related to the fifteen headings found in the manuscript.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The manuscript is composed of various fascicules, of which many carry at the end the ownership mark of Johannes Engler, canon of St. Leonhard (p. 140, 168, 304). After a calendar (pp. 4–24) comes the Summa rudium (pp. 25-140). The next quire (pp. 143–168) contains the synodal decrees of Marquart von Randeck, bishop of Constance (the decrees, and not the copy, date from 1407, p. 165). The remaining quires contain observations, sermons, a Latin-German vocabulary (pp. 290–304), recipes and calendar-related texts, as well as various spiritual and lay short texts. Among the latter are two collections of fables (pp. 141–144 and 266–275). The quires frequently start at the beginning of a text and often have blank pages at the end, a phenomenon that, along with the multiple ownership marks and worn outer leaves of quires, points to the individual quires being used for some time without a binding. Fifteenth-century leather binding, containing several bosses. On the pastedowns, the offset of a German-language charter can be seen.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The manuscript transmits Vincentius Hispanus' apparatus to the Compilatio tertia. Composed in 1210–1215, this apparatus is an extensive, stable series of glosses on a collection of Pope Innocent III's decretals. This manuscript has the distinction of being a thirteenth-century Italian pecia-exemplar of this gloss-apparatus (without the text of the Compilatio tertia). Pecia-exemplars served as approved sources for the serial copying at universities of legal texts and their apparatus of glosses.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The manuscript begins with the important summa of confession by the Dominican Raymond of Peñafort († 1275), the Summa de poenitentia together with its fourth book, finished in 1235 with the title Summa de matrimonio. According to the colophon on p. 246b, Johannes Meyer von Diessenhofen copied the text from 26 August to 8 November 1395. Immediately, or shortly, thereafter, the same hand copied two confessors' manuals of the Dominican John of Fribourg († 1304) along with a few small additions. The Libellus quaestionum casualium concerns cases that are not treated or only summarily discussed in Raymond of Peñafort's Summa de poenitentia. The concise Confessionale was tailored to the practical needs of confessors.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The confessors' manual of Magister Simon borrows extensively from Raymond of Peñafort's Summa de poenitentia and Summa de matrimonio. The text contains an indictment that suggests an origin in the Diocese of Paris around 1250 or a little later. According to the ownership note on p. 1, the manuscript, written in two hands in the second half of the thirteenth century or the first half of the fourteenth century, entered the Abbey library of St. Gall by 1478 at the latest.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The manuscript chiefly transmits a 1481 Landgerichtsordnung (procedural and penal ordinances) for the Abbey-Principality of Kempten, which was possibly copied before the end of the fifteenth century. The manuscript was used by Ulrich Degelin, Chancellor under Abbot Johann Erhard Blarer von Wartensee (1587–1594) and author of a new Landgerichtsordnung for Kempten. Thereafter, the manuscript passed successively into the possession of the Lindau legal scholars Johannes Andreas Heider († 1719) and Johann Reinhard Wegelin († 1764), before Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger acquired it for St. Gall Abbey between 1780 and 1792.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The bulk of this manuscript is constituted by lives of the Apostles taken from the Elsässische Legenda Aurea, an important Upper German rendition of James of Voragine's Legendary (pp. 1–259, largely identical to the abridged legendary in Cod. Sang. 594). There then follows the mystical treatise Christus und die sieben Laden (pp. 260–277). The last two quires (pp. 281–328) contain a collection of spiritual, mostly mystical excerpts (Meister Eckhart, Jan van Ruusbroec) and, on the final pages, an indulgence prayer intended to be recited before an image of St. Gregory (indulgence promise dated 1456, pp. 326–328). Several pages before this prayer, there is an explicitly-connected accompanying prayer (pp. 319–320). Scarpatetti believes the scribe was Sister Endlin of the Franciscan convent St. Leonard in St. Gall. Later, the manuscript came into the possession of Johannes Kaufmann (ownership marks, p. 1, p. 277, and on the upper piece of the book block), and, even later, it belonged to a lay brother of the monastery of St. Gall (p. 328). Simple red initials provide the only decoration. The binding is red-colored pigskin of the fifteenth century, with clasps and with six of ten original bosses still in place. Some fragments used as quire guards can be seen (e.g., p. 52/53).
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This extensive manuscript miscellany was written by the secular priest Matthias Bürer. According to the numerous colophons, he finished the copies of the texts in the period from ca. 1448 to 1463 in Kenzingen (Baden-Württemberg) and in many places in Tyrol. The manuscript transmits among other things several theological treatises, a confessors' manual, two mirrors of confession, an ars moriendi (“the art of dying”), the Acts of the Apostles with the Glossa ordinaria, sermons, as well as Books II–IV of Pope Gregory the Great's Dialogues. After the death of Matthias Bürer in 1485, the manuscript went, along with other books, to the Abbey of St. Gall, in accordance with a 1470 agreement.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The manuscript was written at the turn of the fourteenth to fifteenth century. It transmits a collection of charters and formularies for the ecclesiastical benefice and courts system, secular money transactions and sales, the feudal system, and so on. The notes at the end of the manuscript identify its owner as Johannes Pfister of Gossau († 1433?), imperial notary and cleric of the bishopric of Constance, who was in the service of the city and abbey of St. Gall. The manuscript subsequently belonged to the city clerk of St. Gall Johannes Widembach († c. 1456), who placed his coat of arms on the inside of the back cover.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The two-part paper manuscript transmits two theological works that, according to the colophons, were copied in 1392 and 1393. The works are Johannes Müntzinger's commentary on Rudolf von Liebegg's Pastorale novellum, a handbook of sacramental doctrine, and Konrad von Soltau's systematic explanation of the foundations of Christian belief, written in the form of a commentary on the decretal “Firmiter credimus”.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This quarto volume brings together various texts, mostly shorter in length, of which the bulk are spiritual essays and prayers, including: a treatise on the Passion (pp. 4–38), prayers on the Passion (pp. 68–84), prayers for the canonical hours (pp. 88–91), a treatise on the Fall (pp. 92–107), and another on the quattuor gemitus turturis (pp. 112-159); a Biblia pauperum indicates numerous saints and for what emergencies they can be invoked (pp. 160–193). Among the spiritual texts, there are also a few in German (e.g., pp. 218–220, 238). Two letters concern St. Gall: one is addressed to Abbot Eglolf (pp. 40–43), another to monks who have fled to St. Gall (pp. 85–88). Additional texts treat the Council of Constance and monastic reforms; also here there is a reference to St. Gall (pp. 239–250). The last quire is composed of parchment leaves and could have come from the fourteenth century; it contains a grammar and medical texts (pp. 251–266). The manuscript has a limp binding; for guards was used a German-language parchment charter, of which the year 1415 and the name of a ulrichen leman burger ze arbon are still legible.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The eighteenth- or nineteenth-century cardboard binding contains four roughly contemporary manuscript parts from the second half of the fifteenth century. Parts I and III are written in the same hand and transmit instructions and examples for the correct composition of Latin letters and charters and for the use of rhetorical figures. Part II contains a textbook of procedural law by Johannes Urbach; Part IV is a collection of Latin letters composed in the years 1465–1480 and addressed to the Einsiedeln monk and early humanist Albrecht von Bonstetten.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
Completed in 1338, Bartholomew of Pisa's Summa de casibus conscientiae is one of the most widespread late-medieval confessors' manuals. Its success is due to its practical orientation and the alphabetical organization of keywords from canon law and moral doctrine. This copy from the second quarter of the fifteenth century likely belonged to the books that the secular priest Matthias Bürer agreed in 1470 to give to the Abbey of St. Gall, and which were transferred after his death in 1485.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This fourteenth-century manuscript on paper contains an Exposition of the Mass by the Franciscan lector Martinus of Vienna. Two scribes carefully produced this single-column copy in a regular Gothic bookhand. They are also responsible for numerous corrections and marginal notes that appear throughout the codex. This volume belonged to the Abbey Library of Saint Gall since at least the fifteenth century, as attested by a German note of ownership at the bottom of the first page (p. 1).
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This composite codex belonged to Kemli, a monk of St. Gall who had the parts, some of which come from the fourteenth century, bound together and interspersed with blank pages, which he and other writers then filled in. For this reason, the manuscript features numerous different hands and a constantly changing layout. The larger blocks of related text are a collection of sermons (Liber Sagittarius, pp. 3–61), a confessors' manual (pp. 71a–92b), commentaries on hymns and sequences (pp. 118–217b), as well as a collection, apparently assembled by Kemli himself, of ancient historical exempla, which in part are taken from the Gesta romanorum (pp. 226–357). The leather binding dates from the fifteenth century.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This small prayerbook contains four large textual units, of which three could be called Marian prayers. A short psalter that connects the first verse of each psalm with an Ave Maria (pp. 5–35), an extensive litany of saints (pp. 37–68), the “Joys of Mary” (pp. 69–180), and another short psalter that is structured like the first text, except that throughout it uses a different Psalm verse instead of the initial verse (pp. 180–200). The manuscript is entirely written by a skilled hand and contains rubrics and initials in red and blue ink. The text is preceded by two full-page illuminations (p. 2 Enthroned Virgin and Child, p. 3 the Flagellation of Christ). The mention of St. Abundius of Como (p. 56) suggests a possible place of origin for the codex. Thus Scherrer suggests that it could have been copied in Italy for Benedictines; Scarpatetti thinks that it was produced in or for a lay chapter or a women's convent. On p. C can be found a likely post-medieval ownership mark by a certain Jodokus Graislos in Greek script. In the eighteenth century, the book received its current, unadorned binding and an ownership mark of the St. Gall-dependent convent of St. Johann im Thurtal (p. 1), whence the manuscript came to the Abbey Library.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
Most likely intended for the convent of Dominican nuns of St. Catherine in St. Gall, this tiny psalter (11 x 8 cm) reveals its Dominican use already in the calendar (ff. 2r-7v), which includes Dominican saints, such as Thomas Aquinas and Peter Martyr. Copied in a single column of textualis by a regular hand, the text is punctuated by alternating red and blue initials, sometimes with pen flourishes, and in different sizes according to the textual divisions (psalm, verse). In addition to Latin notes, the margins contain instructions in German on how to recite the Psalms. After the litany of saints and prayers (ff. 151r-159v), a paper quire has been added, dating from the end of the fifteenth century and containing hymns (ff. 160r-170v).
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This substantial manuscript contains a Benedictine breviary. According to Scarpatteti, a professional copyist produced this in a Benedictine monastery, either in Savoy or in Italy, given some mentions related to Montecassino. The script, a rotunda, and the decoration, consisting of red and blue initials with blue and violet pen flourishes, betray the same transalpine origin. In addition, a fourteenth-century note written in Italian confirms this provenance (p. 8). Although the manuscript is only first officially attested in a catalogue of the St. Gall library in 1827, the insertion of the first pages in paper suggests that it was there at least from the fifteenth century (A-H). Indeed, beyond to adding various notes, a fifteenth-century copyist completed the fragmentary calendar and inserted into it the name of Notker, who was venerated in St. Gall (p. H).
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This small manuscript contains the summer part of a breviary, copied in an elegant textualis, probably in France, as suggested by the entries in the fragmentary calendar (for example, the anniversary masses for the King of France and for the Countess of Blois). At the end of the codex (f. 261v), annotations in German, written probably in the fourteenth century, and others from the fifteenth century relative to St. Gall (ff. 174v-175r) indicate that, early on, it was present in the German-speaking region and in St. Gall. Various reasons, including the script of one of the later hands, suggest that, at a very early date, the manuscript belonged to the convent of Dominican nuns of St. Gall.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
A 14th/15th century folio manuscript, written by several hands on differently-arranged sheets of paper, contains an extensive explanation of the liturgical year (Directorium spirituale, pp. 3–205), followed by sermons (pp. 205b–211, 257–370, 375–414), the Acts of the Apostles with a commentary (pp. 213–255), a computistic table (pp. 372–373) and a few lines of Thomas Aquinas on suffrages. The manuscript is incompletely rubricated and has no ownership marks. A colophon to the Acta apostolorum provides the year 1405 (p. 255). The fifteenth-century binding is lacking clasps.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This little booklet brings together in an eighteenth-century half-leather binding two fascicules produced in different centuries and which certainly were not originally connected. The first fascicule (pp. 5–52) contains a single text, the Dominican William Rothwell's treatise on the sacraments. The text, copied in a fourteenth-century hand, is arranged in two columns and is rubricated throughout. Due to water damage, the parchment is heavily rippled. The second fascicule (pp. 53–76) contains the life of St. Bridget of Sweden. The text, laid out in a single column, is written in a fifteenth-century hand, and only the first page is rubricated. The second paper flyleaf at the beginning (p. 3) contains a breviary fragment.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The volume was copied by several fourteenth-century hands. Its contents were either planned to be more extensive or it is not completely preserved. A summary of contents on p. 3, as well as a slip of paper glued to the front cover with a post-medieval table of contents list seven parts, of which, however, only four are present: excerpts from the lives of the Monastic Fathers in two parts (pp. 3–28 and 28–53), excerpts from Gregory the Great's life of St. Benedict (pp. 53–79), and excerpts from the Purgatorium Patricii (pp. 80–91). An index of these four parts can be found on pp. 92–95, followed by two sermons of Pope Innocent III (pp. 96–111) and passages from other sermons (pp. 111–114). On the front and back parchment flyleaves appear numerous notes and ownership entries of different sorts, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. According to them, in the fifteenth century, the book belonged to the Leper chapel of St. Gallen. The medieval half-leather binding was reused in the seventeenth century for a new binding.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The folio-sized volume transmitting a collection of legends from James of Voragine probably comes from the personal collection of Kemli, monk of St. Gall; in any case, it is expanded and corrected in his own hand. The arrangement of the manuscript is therefore not unitary. The older part is copied in two columns by a late fourteenth-century hand; the texts on the leaves inserted and annotated by Kemli are in a single column (pp. 2–20, 164–189, 210–211, 445–462, 471–474). The Legenda sanctorum (pp. 2–452) is supplemented by a Materia de exorcismo et coniurationibus (pp. 456–470) added by Kemli. To this text there are some additions, pp. 463–470, made in an another hand from the second half of the fifteenth century, which in turn were expanded by Kemli (p. 470). On pp. 471–473 follows the final text, written in Kemli's hand, containing a legend of the Eleven Thousand Virgins; before the beginning of the text a half-page leaf was glued. Probably it was the woodcut with the ship of St. Ursula that Ildefons von Arx detached (Kemli-Kat., Nr. 31). The fifteenth-century binding has been repaired several times and has two leather covers and, on the front cover, a title label written by Kemli.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This extensive volume was copied at the turn of the thirteenth to fourteenth century by a single hand with a somewhat varying ductus. It contains a thematically ordered compilation of short examples and observations on virtues and vices (pp. 3–658) that may have been taken from Etienne de Bourbon or Humbertus de Romanis. This summa is made accessible by an index (pp. 659–661), written in a later hand, which hand also completed the foliation. The manuscript is rubricated throughout and contains two-line red and blue lombards. On the front flyleaf can be found a fragment of a charter from 1295. The red-leather binding has the remains of a medieval clasp.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This folio-size manuscript contains a single text, the Gemahelschaft Christi mit der gläubigen Seele (redaction: Es spricht ain haidischer maister es sy besser und nützer), an extensive and still-unedited book of monastic edification. The anonymous author may have been an Augustinian Hermit; his readership largely consisted in female religious communities. Indeed, the present manuscript comes from such a community; based on a comparison of scripts, it was copied and dated by Angela Varnbühler, the chronicler and long-time prioress of the convent of St. Catherine in St. Gall (colophon on p. 842/843). In the run-up to the Reformation, the librarian Regula Keller sent this manuscript and another (today lost) to the women's community in Appenzell, as reported by the letter accompanying the shipment that is pasted on p. 2. From there, the codex went to Wonnenstein Cloister, and in 1782 to the Abbey Library (ownership entry by P. Pius Kolb on p. 4). Two entries from 1584 attest that a certain Hans Bart had das Buoch gelernet (p. 1 and p. 845). The manuscript is laid out in two columns and rubricated throughout. A bookmark and a single leaf from a post-incunable breviary printed in the workshop of Erhard Ratdolt in Augsburg are inserted. Between pp. 839 and 840 many leaves have been removed (loss of text). Unadorned leather binding, contemporary with the text, with two clasps (one lost). On the wooden boards the offsets of two German-language charters are visible.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This German-language manuscript gathers together a series of strongly mystical stories and prayers. The first two thirds (pp. 1–259) are taken up by three translations of texts by Elisabeth of Schönau, all of which have as their object St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins. Then follows the legend of St. Cordula (pp. 260–264). The remaining texts, with the exception of an excerpt from Mechtild of Hackeborn (pp. 295–302) are all prayers, mostly addressed to Mary and often with extensive instructions for the prayer. The book is rubricated throughout, and it has two simple pen-flourished initials (p. 1, 162); the rubric on p. 1 is written in a display script. Inside the book can be found a bookmark made of four thin cords knotted at the top. The binding comes from the fifteenth century and is decorated with stamps and decorative lines. In 1794, Ildefons von Arx purchased the manuscript from the collection of the dissolved convent of Poor Clares of St. Dorothea of Freiburg im Breisgau (ownership marks p. 1 and p. 320; purchase note, p. 1).
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This manuscript contains selections from the Elsässischen Legenda Aurea, an important Upper-German rendition of James of Voragine's legendary. The selections are largely limited to the saints of the summer section. The first part of the manuscript (pp. I–64) is written in a hand that copies the legends of John, Peter, and Paul. A second, somewhat less skilled, hand writes the rest, beginning with the only verse text of the manuscript (the Barbara-legend, starting on p. 66). This verse text is the only text that the Baroque label on the spine mentions. Also from the Legenda Aurea is the account of the Einsiedeln Engelweihe (pp. 191–196). Both parts contain rubrics and restrained rubrication in a hand different from those used for the text. The beginning and end of the manuscript are missing; the binding, restored in the nineteenth century, dates from the fifteenth century.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The paper manuscript was copied in a rapid cursive by Friedrich Kölner during his stay at the monastery of St. Gall between 1430 and 1436. It contains first the lives of the Apostles in the German translation of the summer part of the Golden Legend (pp. 6-269). There then follow, also in German, the sermon Von den Zeichen der Messe, composed by the Franciscan Berthold of Regensburg (pp. 269-284), Die Legende von den Heiligen Drei Königen, composed by Johannes von Hildesheim (pp. 284-389), a Pilatus-Veronika-Legende (pp. 389-400), a Greisenklage (pp. 400-402), and finally the Fünfzehn Vorzeichen des Jüngsten Gerichts (pp. 402-403). According to Cod. Sang. 1285, p. 11, the manuscript entered the possession of the Abbey Library as part of the acquisition of manuscripts by Johann Nepomuk Hauntiger, which took place between 1780 and 1792.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The manuscript, rebound in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, transmits in its first part a commentary on the second book of the Decretales Gregorii IX (Liber Extra). The second part of the manuscript comprises just two quires, with a commentary on Title 26 of the same second book of the decretals. The manuscript belonged to the St. Gall monk Johannes Bischoff († 1495), who studied Canon Law in 1474–1476 at the University of Pavia. He wrote the commentary in the first part of the manuscript in his own hand.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The flexible binding contains four manuscript parts, each of which transmits a commentary on selected Titles and Chapters of the first book of the Decretales Gregorii IX (Liber Extra). Parts I, III and IV are written in the hand of the St. Gall Monk Johannes Bischoff († 1495), who studied Canon Law at the University of Pavia in 1474–1476. He likely obtained Part II during his studies in Pavia.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This volume contains a single text, a German-language intepretation of the Song of Songs, of which 25 manuscript witnesses are currently known. This extensive text is probably not based on a Latin model and its structure becomes decreasingly systematic. Although it is based on passages from the Song of Songs, it does not contain an actual commentary, but is divided into three books: teachings on faith (Book 1, pp. 8–241), a monastic doctrine of virtue (Book 2, pp. 241–431), and discussions of sins, penance, etc. (Book 3, pp. 443–512). An extensive table of contents precedes the text (pp. 5–7). A colophon at the end of the second book (p. 431) states that this part of the manuscript was completed in 1497. The whole manuscript is written and rubricated in the same hand. According to an entry on p. 1, the manuscript came from a convent in Freiburg (Liber S. Galli Emptus 1699 Friburgi); Scarpatetti suggests Adelhausen (Dominican nuns). On an inserted piece of paper can be read a note about the profession of Sisters Margret Boshartin, Kattrin Ferberin and Anna Branwartin in Constance in 1511 and 1514; on the back there is a fragment of a letter (?). Half-leather binding contemporary to the text, with striped and stamped decoration and clasps. To the headband is affixed a braided, two-colored bookmark.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This extensive prayer book, probably completed over time by a single hand, contains a treatise on the canonical hours (pp. 34–224) as well as a Marian office (the German version of the Officium parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis, pp. 225–343). These are accompanied by sermons and shorter treatises: at the beginning, texts on the sufferings of Christ, structured according to the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer (pp. 1–33, the first page is missing); at the end of the manuscript appear the short treatise Von der seligen Dorfmagd (pp. 344–346), a fragmentary treatise on the twelve virtues of the sacraments (pp. 347–352), a sermon by Johannes Nider (pp. 352–362), another sermon (In unser Capel die erst bredig von gehorsami, p. 363–384), as well as shorter texts and textual fragments (pp. 385–396). A late-medieval entry (p. 390) gives a name (das buch hadt hanns petris auch ze len). Fifteenth-century red-leather binding, detached bosses, and missing clasps; the hand-marbled pastedowns attest to a modern restoration.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The manuscript is entirely copied by the Hersfeld reform monk Friedrich Kölner, who was active in the monastery of St. Gall from 1430 to 1436. Among other things, he took over the spiritual care of the women's community of St. Georgen. The manuscripts written by him, of which twelve survive, were produced chiefly for this group of recipients, and this can be assumed for the present manuscript, which is in a handy octavo-format. It contains an extensive sermon cycle, introduced by a sermon presumably by Rulmann Merswin (pp. 2–22: Leben Jesu / Von der geistlichen Spur), which Kölner ascribes to Johannes Tauler (the same combination of texts can be found in Cod. Sang. 1067). The forty sermons that follow are actually by Tauler (pp. 22–557). Under the rubric Von der drivaltikait on pp. 134–147 appears the pseudo-Eckhartian composite treatise Von dem anefluzze des vaters. Tauler's Lenten discourses are missing; instead Kölner refers to two letters by Johannes von Schoonhoven. Although these are not contained in the present volume, they are available in Kölner's own translation in St. Katharina in Wil, Klosterarchiv, Cod. M 47, another manuscript that Kölner probably wrote for the women in St. Georgen. The single-column manuscript is densely written and thoroughly rubricated. The unadorned binding was restored in 1992; the book block shows signs of numerous medieval reparations as well.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This folio-volume contains an extensive sermon cycle, introduced by a sermon presumably by Rulmann Merswin (ff. 1ra–5vb: Leben Jesu / Von der geistlichen Spur), which here is ascribed to Tauler (as in Cod. Sang. 1015). The sermons that follow (ff. 5vb–235ra) are actually by Tauler. On ff. 85va–93va, under the rubric Von der drivaltikait, is the pseudo-Eckhartian composite treatise Von dem anefluzze des vaters; on ff. 235ra–241va are four letters of Henry Suso (Letters 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the Little Book of Letters), followed by another sermon. The manuscript, arranged in two columns, is carefully written, corrected in many places, and rubricated throughout. Each sermon is introduced by an ornate initial, usually five lines high, with very simple red and blue pen flourishes; a few initials are someone larger and more elaborately presented (e.g., f. 190vb). Well preserved late-fifteenth-century leather binding with decorative lines, five bosses on each side (only one on the back is missing) and two clasps. Two owner's marks on the front pastedown attest to the ownership of the book by the sisters of St. Leonhard cloister, and later by those of St. Georgen in St. Gall.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The paper manuscript contains the chronicles of the librarian of St. Gall, Jodocus Metzler (1574-1639); the longest of them is dedicated to the history of the abbey of St. Gall (pp. 11-750), followed by the chronicles of Engelberg (pp. 813-825) and of St. John in the Thur valley (pp. 829-840), and finally by a catalogue of the abbots of St. Magnus of Füssen (pp. 845-848). This copy was made by the St. Gall monk Marianus Buzlin in 1613, while the marginal notes are in Metzler's hand. The manuscript opens with a full-page illumination on parchment (p. 13); in its side margins appear St. Gall (left) and St. Otmar (right), the bottom of the page features the coat of arms of the abbot Bernhard Müller (1594-1630), while the blue-painted background, which probably would have had the title, is left empty with the exception of gold ornaments in the corners.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
Copied after 1540 (the date can be deduced from the mention of the consecration of the chapel of Saints Fabian and Sebastian on p. 6) by the St. Gall organist and scribe Fridolin Sicher (1490-1546), this manuscript contains the first two rules of the Directorium perpetuum. Its content is almost entirely identical to Cod. Sang. 533, which is the first of seven volumes commissioned by Abbot Franz von Gaisberg (Cod. Sang. 533-539). Produced some twenty years later, Cod. Sang. 532 is the only volume that survives from the second series; the others were either never produced or have been lost. Decoration had been planned but was never done (p. IV and 56 for full pages, and p. 1 and 57 for initials). Analogously to the first series, it is likely that the arms and the portrait of the commissioning abbot – probably Diethelm Blarer (1530-1564) – would have been included.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The paper manuscript from the second half of the fifteenth century contains three saints' lives in German: St. Benedict (pp. 1-57), St. Gall (pp. 63-294) and St. Otmar (pp. 299-372). While the first of these three lives is the German version taken from the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I, the two that follow resemble, at least partially, the translations of the Benedictine Friedrich Kölner. The texts are carefully copied in a single column by a single scribe and decorated with simple initials painted in red. The brown-leather binding, dating from the fifteenth/sixteenth century, is blind-stamped. At the latest by the sixteenth century, this copy belonged to the community of lay brothers of the abbey of St. Gall (p. 374).
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The volume brings together two codicological units copied independently from each other in different periods. The first part (pp. 1-158) includes the first three books of the Sentences by Magister Bandinus (pp. 1-154), the author of an abridged version of the eponymous work by Peter Lombard (Libri quatuor sententiarum). Here taking the place of the fourth book is a short treatise on women, De muliere forti (pp. 154-158). Several fourteenth-century hands produced this copy. The second part (pp. 159-234) of this codex contains a treatise on baptism, dating from the twelfth century (pp. 160-234). On the basis of the stamp of the Abbot Diethelm Blarer (p. 158), the first part was present in the library of St. Gall since at least the middle of the sixteenth century. This two-part manuscript received its current cardboard binding probably towards the end of the eighteenth century or at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Ildefons von Arx wrote the table of contents (p. V1).
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This paper manuscript contains first of all a series of draft sermons dated by the colophon to 1381 (p. 80). There then follows, in the same hand as before, a partial copy of Defensor of Ligugé's Liber scintillarum (pp. 80-96), miracles (pp. 96-108) and an index (pp. 108-110). A different hand copied book IV of Augustine's De doctrina christiana and makes numerous marginal annotations (pp. 113-162). Next comes, probably in the hand of the wandering monk Gall Kemli († 1481), Aileranus Sapiens' interpretation of the ancestors of Christ (pp. 163-168), as well as excerpts from theological texts, including the Mammotrectus by the Franciscan Johannes Marchesinus.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The manuscript contains the Sentences of Magister Bandinus, author of an abridged version of Peter Lombard's Libri quatuor sententiarum. As Ildefons von Arx observes (p. 1), the text is identical to that of Cod. Sang. 769 except that this copy has the fourth book, dedicated, like that of the Lombard, to the sacraments (pp. 147-186). Copied in two columns, rubricated and decorated with simple red initials at the beginning of chapters, the text has been revised, corrected, and completed by additions.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The manuscript is composed of several units and includes many texts with varying content. The first part (pp. 1-106), in paper, contains a synodal book (pp. 1-81), as well as the Auctoritates sanctorum (pp. 82-105), which, according to the colophon (p. 105a), were copied by Johannes Gaernler in 1378 or 1379. Below the colophon is a drawing, perhaps made by the copyist, representing a man (a king?) holding a cup in hand. Several parchment quires follow (pp. 107-224) with sermons, provisions for penance, etc., dating partly from the thirteenth century and partly from the fourteenth. The end of the manuscript, in paper (pp. 225-471), includes, alongside the penitential of Johannes de Deo (pp. 284-315), sermons, as well as ascetic and theological texts, which were copied in the fourteenth century (pp. 316-471). According to a note of possession (p. 471), the manuscript, or at least its last part, was in the Abbey of St. Gall at the end of the fifteenth century at the latest. The binding has a beautiful interlace pattern on the spine.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This manuscript is a complete exemplar of Peter Lombard's four books of the Sentences (Libri quatuor sententiarum) (pp. 4-430), preceded and followed by a series of Latin verses, partially in leonine hexameter (pp. 3 and 430-431). This neat thirteenth-century copy in two columns is completely rubricated, and the margins likewise have in red ink the abbreviated names of the authors cited in the text. Citations are sometimes indicated by a long vertical red stroke, which occasionally ends with a fleuron. An elegant, red or red-and-black initial introduces the prologue (p. 4a) and the four books of the Sentences (pp. 8b, 126b, 237a, and 315a), as well the table of the chapters of books II and III (pp. 123 and 235a). The manuscript has a fifteenth-century wooden binding, typical of the Abbey of St. Gall.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This manuscript transmits sermons for the liturgical year and was copied by a regular hand in a thirteenth-century gothic minuscule. It is incomplete at the beginning and the end. The sermons, numbered in the upper margin, run from VII (Dominica iiii. in quadragesima) to LXXXVIII (In vigilia epiphanie domini). At the beginning of each sermon there is a simple two-line-high red initial and a rubricated title indicating the day on which the sermon was to be read. On the basis of the stamp of the Abbot Diethelm Blarer (p. 410), the manuscript was present in the library of St. Gall since at least the middle of the sixteenth century. The cardboard binding, covered in blank parchment and adorned with green-silk ribbons as clasps, dates from the eighteenth/nineteenth century.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The largest part of this manuscript contains sermons copied in two columns by multiple scribes (pp. 1-144). The various homilies are sometimes introduced by rubrics and small, alternating red-and-blue initials. The last part (pp. 145-157) is smaller in size (19 x 17 cm) and is copied for the most part in a single column; it contains leonine verses and versified sayings. Possessed by the St. Gall Abbey Library since at least the mid-sixteenth century (see the stamp of Abbot Diethlem Blarer, p. 120), the manuscript was rebound in the seventeenth/eighteenth century in a binding of blank parchment glued on cardboard, which closes with green silk laces.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
Ovid's Pontics constitute the only text of this gothic-minuscule manuscript copied by a single thirteenth-century hand. Divided into four books in modern editions, the 46 letters, poetic elegies related to the poet's exile in Tomis, here follow without interruption. Simple initials painted in red distinguish the letters from each other until p. 66; afterwards, there are only the blank spaces for the initials that were not produced. In addition to maniculae in the margins, there are numerous interlinear and marginal glosses, which more or less date to the same period as the text's script.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
Five codicological units make up this paper manuscript; the text was written by one or more hands in the fifteenth century. The longest texts in the manuscript are the Tractatus de vitiis capitalibus, which is probably to be ascribed to Robert Holcot, the Dialogus rationis et conscientiae of Matthew of Krakow, and the Dialogus de celebratione missae by Henry of Hessia the Younger. The remaining texts are shorter, including sermons, spiritual instructions, and astrological and medical treatises. In addition, there are added numerous documents related to the Council of Constance (1414—1418) that deal with the condemnation of John Hus and with the question of Communion under both kinds.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
This voluminous paper manuscript was written by Gallus Kemli († 1480/81) approximately in the period 1466 to 1476. It transmits tools, compendia, and summaries of theology, canon law, liturgy, and confession and penance, as well as prayers and chants with German Plainchant (Hufnagel) notation for the mass, a rituale, and, finally, further prayers, blessings, sermons and exhortations, partly in Latin and partly in German. The manuscript is bound in a limp wrapper with a red leather cover. Gallus Kemli, monk of Saint Gall, who led an erratic itinerant life outside the abbey, left at his death a large collection of books, including this one.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
The flexible binding covers ten codicological units containing texts that the St. Gall monk Johannes Bischoff († 1495) for the most part copied in his own hand or, for a smaller number, obtained during his studies of Canon Law at Pavia in 1474–1476. They include commentaries on individual Titles of the Decretales Gregorii IX (Liber Extra), the Liber Sextus and the Clementinae, discussions of legal procedure, torture, hereditary law, and other themes, an alphabetically-organized reference work on moral doctrine, as well as the public disputation of Johannes Bischoff.
Online Since: 09/22/2022
Single sheet of a collection of homilies, probably in two volumes, from the Dominican Monastery of Bern, which were used around 1495 by the bookbinder Johannes Vatter as pastedowns for various incunables that are currently held in Bern and Solothurn. After the secularization of the monastery in 1528, the host volume perhaps came into the possession of the Sterner family in Biel and further to Bern via the antiquarian bookshop Max Müller (BBB Mss.h.h.XXXIV.35).
Online Since: 07/14/2021
Single sheet of a collection of homilies, probably in two volumes, from the Dominican Monastery of Bern, which were used around 1495 by the bookbinder Johannes Vatter as pastedowns for various incunables that are currently held in Bern and Solothurn. After the secularization of the monastery in 1528, the host volume perhaps came into the possession of the Sterner family in Biel and further to Bern via the antiquarian bookshop Max Müller (BBB Mss.h.h.XXXIV.35).
Online Since: 07/14/2021
Important remnants of a collection of homilies, probably in two volumes, from the Dominican Monastery of Bern, which were used around 1495 by the bookbinder Johannes Vatter as pastedowns for various incunables that are currently held in Bern and Solothurn. After the secularization of the monastery in 1528, the host volumes perhaps as part of a bequest of books by the Venner [standard bearer] Jürg Schöni in 1534, became part of the Bern library. Around 1945, Johannes Lindt detached the fragments from the host volumes.
Online Since: 07/14/2021
Important remnants of a collection of homilies, probably in two volumes, from the Dominican Monastery of Bern, which were used around 1495 by the bookbinder Johannes Vatter as pastedowns for various incunables that are currently held in Bern and Solothurn. After the secularization of the monastery in 1528, the host volumes perhaps as part of a bequest of books by the Venner [standard bearer] Jürg Schöni in 1534, became part of the Bern library. Around 1945, Johannes Lindt detached the fragments from the host volumes.
Online Since: 07/14/2021
Three large-format leaves from a manuscript produced in Eastern France and containing the Instituta coenobiorum of John Cassian. The fragment, probably taken from a medieval book binding, came to Bern in 1632 as part of the property of Jacques Bongars.
Online Since: 07/12/2021
Bifolium from a manuscript of Gregory the Great's Homiliae in Evangelia. This fragment came to Bern in 1632 as part of the bequest of Jacques Bongars.
Online Since: 07/12/2021
A single leaf of a manuscript of Juvenal's Satires from the library of Fleury. Other parts of this manuscript can be found in Orléans, BM 295; cf. Vatican, BAV Reg. lat. 980, f. 42, and Leiden, Voss lat. F12. This fragment came to Bern in 1632 as part of the bequest of Jacques Bongars.
Online Since: 07/12/2021