This manuscript, produced in the first half of the 9th century in Fulda, contains two astronomical texts: several excerpts of the Aratus latinus and the Aratea by Germanicus with explanatory scholia, illustrations of the 34 constellations and a (now removed) drawing of the entire night sky. The Aratea, based on the astronomical didactic poem by Aratus of Soli, served as illustrative source for the astronomical background knowledge required for teaching the computus (calculating the date of Easter) at the school of the Fulda Monastery. (gam/flr)

Online Since: 06/25/2015

This small-format parchment manuscript is known as the “Basler Liederhandschrift”; it transmits German and Latin texts in verse and prose, which are primarily spiritual in character and in part are supplemented with musical notation. Among them are texts by Konrad of Würzburg and Walther von der Vogelweide, among others. This manuscript was written around 1300; in the 15th century it was in the Carthusian Monastery of Basel, and in the 17th century it was the property of Remigius Fäsch, a collector from Basel.  (stu)

Online Since: 12/14/2017

One of the Isidore codices from the Monastery of Fulda; the codex escaped destruction because it reached Basel during the 16th century, before the abduction and destruction of the library during the Thirty Years' War. There it apparently was to serve as a textual source for a planned edition of Isidore's works. This codex was created in Fulda at the end of the 9th century and still retains its Carolingian binding in a parchment cover. In addition to the works of Isidore, it contains the oldest catalog of the Fulda library, the so-called Basel recipes in Old High German, and an astronomic-computistic cycle of illustrations. (stu)

Online Since: 06/22/2017

One of the Isidore codices from the Monastery of Fulda; the codex escaped destruction because it reached Basel during the 16th century, before the abduction and destruction of the library during the Thirty Years' War. There it apparently was to serve as a textual source for a planned edition of Isidore's works. In Fulda, it originated by merging an 8th century Northern English manuscript with a continental-insular text from the first half of the 9th century, probably written in Fulda. The codex retains its Carolingian binding in a parchment cover. To the extent that the texts contained therein are critically edited, the codex is considered among important textual witnesses. (stb)

Online Since: 12/13/2013

One of the Isidore codices from the Monastery of Fulda; it survived because it reached Basel in the 16th century, before the library's destruction in the Thirty Years' War. There it apparently served as a possible textual source for a planned edition of Isidore's works. The codex consists of several parts. A German Anglo-Saxon manuscript from the second half of the 8th century containing the second book of Isidore's Synonyma was supplemented in the first third of the 9th century, probably in Fulda, with the first book of the same work by Isidore. Very early already, this was bound together with another item containing Admonitio ad filium spiritualem by Pseudo-Basilius as well as various excerpts, which probably were also written in Fulda around 800. (stb)

Online Since: 03/19/2015

One of the Isidore codices (or Pseudo-Isidore) from the Monastery of Fulda; the codex escaped destruction because it reached Basel during the 16th century, before the abduction and destruction of the library during the Thirty Years' War. There it apparently was to serve as a textual source for a planned edition of Isidore's works. The codex originated in Ireland in the 8th century and apparently retains its original Irish binding in a parchment cover. The grammar manuscript presents as its main text De vitiis (linguae), which it attributes to a Isidorus iunior, the Codex unicus. According to the editor, the text might have orginated around 500, perhaps in Spain, and is one of the sources used by Isidore for the first book of his Etymologiae; for the other texts contained herein as well, it is among one of the exceedingly rare remaining textual witnesses. (stb)

Online Since: 12/13/2013

A composite manuscript from Fulda with texts primarily on the topic of repentance and asceticism. Similar to a series of Isidore-codices from Fulda, it reached Basel in the 16th century - possibly because one of the texts contained therein also survived under Isidore's name; thus it escaped the abduction and destruction of the Fulda library during the Thirty Years' War. The various parts and texts are written in Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian minuscule and originated in Fulda and its surroundings, up to Mainz. The leather binding, presumably still Carolingian, was much changed at a later time, especially due to the removal of the covers. Apparently in Basel, what had formerly been the first quire (Paenitentiale Theodori), in a markedlay smaller format, was removed from the collection. Today it bears the shelf mark N I 1: 3c‬‬. (stb)

Online Since: 03/17/2016

One of the Isidore codices from the Monastery of Fulda; the codex escaped destruction because it reached Basel during the 16th century, before the abduction and destruction of the library during the Thirty Years' War. There it apparently was to serve as a textual source for a planned edition of Isidore's works. The codex originated in England in the 8th century and retains its binding from the 8th or 9th century in a parchment cover. It is considered one of the most important textual witnesses of Isidore's De natura rerum. (stb)

Online Since: 12/13/2013

One of the Isidore codices from the Monastery of Fulda; the codex escaped destruction because it reached Basel during the 16th century, before the abduction and destruction of the library during the Thirty Years' War. There it apparently served as a possible textual source for a planned edition of Isidore's works. The codex was produced in Fulda in the first third of the 9th century and clearly still retains its Carolingian binding of wooden boards covered in brown leather with scudding decoration. (stb)

Online Since: 06/25/2015

One of the Isidore codices from the Monastery of Fulda; the codex escaped destruction because it reached Basel during the 16th century, before the abduction and destruction of the library during the Thirty Years' War. There it apparently served as a possible textual source for a planned edition of Isidore's works. The codex was produced in the first half of the 8th century in England or in an Anglo-Saxon center on the continent. It retains its 8th or 9th century binding in a parchment cover and is considered one of the most important textual witnesses of Isidore's Differentiarum liber. (stb)

Online Since: 06/25/2015

The surviving parts of Diodorus Siculus' universal history were translated from Greek into Latin in the 15th century. This manuscript containing Books 11 to 13 was written in 1453; probably it is the autograph of the translator Iacobus de Sancto Cassiano Cremonensis, in fact, a revised fair copy which transitions into a working manuscript towards the end. (gam/flr)

Online Since: 06/25/2015

This composite manuscript of theological content originally belonged to the patrician family Gossembrot of Augsburg (late 15th century); via Johannes Oporin († 1568), Eusebius Merz († 1616) and Remigius Faesch († 1667), it finally became part of the university library of Basel in 1823. Except for a single remaining woodcut, various miniatures and woodcuts pasted into the manuscript have been torn out. (stu)

Online Since: 06/22/2017

Nikolaus Meyer zum Pfeil, city clerk of Basel, owned a large collection of incunabula of mostly German entertainment literature and himself copied a number of manuscripts, such as this Melusine by Thüring von Ringoltingen in 1471. The paper manuscript contains 38 colored pen and ink drawings, which apparently are by two different painters. Because sheets were lost, the current text has gaps; it is unclear whether illustrations were lost as well. (flr)

Online Since: 12/14/2017

This manuscript, disbound and surviving only in fragments, was used in 1543 by the printer Heinrich Petri from Basel as model for his edition of the Rabani Mauri Moguntinensis archiepiscopi commentaria in Hieremiam prophetam. Various signs from typesetting as well as traces of printing ink provide evidence for such a use. From Petri's print shop, the manuscript became part of the collection of Remigius Fäsch and, together with the other holdings of the Museum Faesch, in 1823 it became the property of the University of Basel. The original provenance of the manuscript is not clear. (stu)

Online Since: 12/14/2017

Early modern composite manuscript containing the only manuscript textual witnesses for several writings by archbishop Hincmar of Reims (845-882), for example for the treatise De ordine palatii, important for the constitutional history of the Carolingian period. (flr)

Online Since: 12/20/2016