Basel, Universitätsbibliothek
Not without entering into competition with the curial judiciary authority did the Council of Basel (1431-1449) demand conciliar judicial authority patterned on the Roman Rota. The tried cases were recorded by notaries of the Rota, as in this manuscript written by Johannes Wydenroyd in the period between 15 March 1435 and 13 June 1439. This manuscript is the middle volume of three remaining Rota manuals from the Council of Basel.
Online Since: 06/25/2015
This incomplete liturgical psalter was made between 1335 and 1350 in Naples. The unusual decorations are the work of the artist Christoforo Orimina. Because the manuscript contains three different coats of arms, the original owner (a member of the Angevin court in Naples) can not be definitively named. After changing hands many times during the 19th and 20th centuries, the manuscript was acquired in 1968 by the owner of the collection "Comites Latentes" ("Hidden Friends") held by the Bibliothèque de Genève.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
This elegant pocket-size book of hours was illuminated in Tours around 1480 by the Maître des camaïeux d’or Le Bigot, who was active in the circle of the painter Jean Bourdichon. The sixteen tiny historiated initials in camaïeu d’or that are contained in the manuscript succeed the usual repertoire with an original cycle dedicated to the seven days of Creation. The artist demonstrates his exceptional technical mastery by lending the body of the initials an especially attractive evanescent character. The subtle arrangement of the surrounding letters should invite the anonymous patron to appreciate the meticulous combination of gold and colors in detail.
Online Since: 12/14/2018
This precious book of hours was made in Florence around 1470-1480. Its rich and elegant illumination is due to the close circle of the most famous florentine miniaturist of his time, Francesco d’Antonio del Chierico. The same hand is responsible for the major illuminations at the beginning of the various sections as well the initials in the text. The flourished initials are of great elegance. A partly erased coat of arms on the opening leaf indicates that the book of hours was made for the wedding of a male member of the Serristori family. The manuscript entered in the collection of the present owner in 1970 and it was deposited at the Bibliothèque de Genève as part of Comites Latentes.
Online Since: 06/23/2014
This handwritten Haggadah Comites Latentes 69 was created in Vienna in 1756. It is decorated with black ink and masterfully imitates copper engraving. The author is the famous scribe and illustrator Simmel ben Moses from Polna (active between 1714 and 1756), who produced about thirty dated manuscripts that have survived until today, of which, however, only 17, including CL 69, are autographs. His works of art are among the most remarkable examples of Hebrew manuscript decoration in 18th century Central Europe. The Song of Solomon, copied by later hands, concludes this magnificent manuscript.
Online Since: 06/22/2017
This manuscript is a hagiographic compilation in French prose which recounts the lives of the apostles, martyrs, confessors and saints. Some of the accounts are attributed to Wauchier de Denain. The manuscript is dated to the first quarter of the 14th century; it was decorated by the Papeleu Master and the illuminator Mahiet and notably contains more than eighty historiated initials.
Online Since: 03/17/2016
This richly decorated book of hours was illuminated in Tours in about 1500, for an owner from Toulouse. In the 15th century, the city of Tours and the Loire valley region were home to the court of the kings of France. This manuscript is closely connected to that glorious past era. The name of court painter Jean Bourdichon (ca. 1457-1521) is associated with two of the miniatures in this book of hours. The other 35 miniatures were painted by three book painters from the atelier of Jean Poyer (+ before 1504), also well-established in Tours.
Online Since: 07/04/2012
The greater part of the manuscript (pp. 21-598) is a compendium by Joseph b. Elijah Tirshom titled Sefer Shoshan Yesod Olam that includes 2174 numbered paragraphs, containing, inter alia, a book of magic called Harba de-Moshe (Sword of Moses) and other texts. Copied in the Ottoman empire in a 15th century Byzantine script with additions in later hands.
Online Since: 06/09/2011
One of the earliest manuscript exemplars of the version of the Tanhuma midrash text known among scholars as the "printed text" (first printed in Constantinople, 1520-22), as distinguished from the version first edited and printed by Solomon Buber in Vilnius, 1885. Copied probably somewhere in the Orient around the 14th century, the Hebrewscript is Oriental semi-cursive.
Online Since: 12/13/2013
This volume is a collection of letters, made in 1467 and 1468 in Naples for Roberto da Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, contains letters by Diogenes of Sinope, Brutus and Hippocrates, who were regarded during the middle ages as the true authors of these letters. They were translated into Latin by Francesco Griffolini Aretino and Ranuccio of Arezzo. This book was presented for sale several times during the 20th century and passed through the hands of prestigious collectors.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This legal manuscript with the title Sefer Ḥokhmat Nashim is part of a vernacular literary genre for women that was widely read in Ashkenazic and Italian communities since the Renaissance. This manual of prescriptions in Judeo-Italian is said to have been copied by the famous Italian kabbalist and preacher Mordechai ben Juda Dato during the second half of the 16th century.
Online Since: 09/26/2017
This text contains an adaptation of several narrative parts of the Bible in Old French. The poem in alexandrine verse (en laisses d’alexandrins) was composed in the 12th century by an author of the continent and became one of the most successful religious works in Old French. This manuscript preserves one of the oldest and most complete exemplars of this work; it is the only one to contain almost the entire text from the Anglo-Norman branch of the text tradition. Because the text probably is of insular origin, this manuscript proves the almost simultaneous dissemination of the text in England.
Online Since: 06/23/2014
This rare Judeo-Arabic fragment is from the Kitab al-Hidaya ila Faraiḍ al-Qulub (Guide to the Duties of the Heart ) by Baḥya ben Joseph Ibn Paquda (2nd half of the 11th century). This work is of fundamental importance since it sets out the first Jewish system of ethics. The manuscript tradition of this Judeo-Arabic work is quite fragmentary because few textual witnesses remain today.
Online Since: 09/26/2017
This volume, written in littera parisiensis in the middle of the 13th century, contains Avicenna’s De anima in a translation by John of Seville, as well as parts from the Metaphysica, translated by Dominicus Gundissalinus. It also contains the first two books from part 2 of Al-Gazali's libri metaphysicae et physicae, also in a translation by Dominicus Gundissalinus. This manuscript came to the Carthusian Monastery of Basel as part of the book collection of Johannes Heynlin, who had purchased the manuscript in 1461.
Online Since: 12/14/2018
This medical miscellany contains among other things a copy of the Antidotarium Magnum, an extensive compendium of medical recipes that was produced in Monte Cassino at the initative of Constantine the African. This copy has particularly unusual decoration, with 22 large-format, ornamented and historiated initials.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This manuscript contains the Floretum medicinae, a work of medical excerpts, divided into 25 books. The origin and the author of the work are unknown. This manuscript was held in the library of the Carthusian Monastery of Basel in the area of shelfmark A of the Bibliotheca antiqua. In addition to the Artes liberales, this shelfmark area also contained philosophy and medicine.
Online Since: 10/04/2018
Manuscript D III 34 consists of two parts: Part I (ff. 1-29) contains the medical manual for horses by Jordanus Ruffus: Part II (ff. 30-255) contains the Mulomedicina Chironis and an incomplete tract by one Oliverius, Stablemaster at the court of Ferdinand I of Naples. This is the only manuscript than Cod. Monacensis latinus 243 that includes a manuscript copy of the Mulomedicina Chironis; the Oliverius tract appears to be unedited.
Online Since: 03/31/2011
The core of this manuscript from the Carthusian Monastery of Basel is a copy of the Flores temporum, a Latin world chronicle from the 13th century that was widely used in Alemannic areas. The copyist, Nicolaus Gerung de Blauenstein, supplemented this chronicle with a self-written, partly German appendix on events from the region around Basel as well as a chronicle of the Basel bishops. Shorter texts such as treatises on councils or on the Carthusian order and lists of emperors, cathedrals, kingdoms and languages in various parts of the world round off the collection.
Online Since: 12/12/2019
This manuscript from the first half of the 15th century contains the German Chronicle of Jakob Twinger von Königshofen (Chap. 6, 1-5), the Rötteln Chronicle, and the Libellus de magnificentia ducis Burgundia in Treveris visa conscriptus (German). It served as model for the University Library Basel’s manuscript E I 1h. Later it was the property of the Amerbach family.
Online Since: 06/13/2019
The manuscript contains the German-language chronicle of Jakob Twinger von Königshofen, an appendix with the chronicle of Röttel, as well as additions concerning events from 1487 to 1497. Since the additions have various connections to the Basel convent of Augustinian Canonesses of Klingental, it is likely that the codex was in their possession. The convent was dissolved in 1557. The manuscript probably remained there and was found by the chronicler Christian Wurstisen (1544-1588), who moved into the empty convent a few years later. Wurstisen used the volume as one of the sources for his own chronicle.
Online Since: 08/21/2025