Katalog der mittelalterlichen Handschriften

The Zentralbibliothek der Wiener Franziskanerprovinz at Graz was founded in the period alter World War II with the aim to bring together in one place all manuscripts and books printed up to the year 1700 and formerly preserved in different houses of the Viennese Province. In consequence of this decision the monastery at Graz keeps nowadays the manuscripts of all convents existing after 1945: Graz, Maria Lankowitz, Maria Lanzendorf, St. Pölten and Vienna. These houses also preserved some latemedieval manuscripts formerly kept in the secularisized convents at Eggenburg, Klosterneuburg and in the nunnery of the Clarisses at Graz. A special group among the Graz manuscript holdings is formed by eight large-sized psalteria, antiphonaria and gradualia dating from 1492 and 1517 partly used for the divine office in the convent at Ljubljana. Beside these codices the Graz library keeps manuscripts of non-franciscan provenience, e. g. from the College of the Jesuits at Graz or from the Dominican convent at Vienna. From the period of the ferst half of the 14th up to the end of the 16th century all together only 41 codices and four printed volumes containing medieval manuscript units are preserved actually. This small number may be explained by the late arrive of the franciscan Observants in Austria in 1451 and by losses e. g. during the siege of Vienna by the Turks when the Viennese convent was destroyed or during the reformation period when friars had to leave many of their houses and, at least, during and after the secularisation under emperor Josef II. With regard to the convent the majority of manuscripts preserved is composed by liturgical texts destinated to the use of the houses of the Observants and Clarisses. Beside these a group of five manuscripts with German or bilingual texts, a manuscript with medical texts, among them a Regimen pestilentiae compiled by Iacobus Iohannes de Castrobarco, physician of emperor Friedrich III., and a collection of treatises against the Hussites are worthy to be mentioned. Gothic bookillumination is represented by examples from Southem Germany dating from ca. 1430, 1460, 1492 and 1517.