Medieval Manuscripts of the Benedictine Nunnery in Salzburg

This project intends to create a scientific catalogue of the medieval German language manuscripts which are preserved at the Benedictine Nunnery Nonnberg in Salzburg in order to make them accessible to researchers for the first time. The library of the monastery (founded in the 8th Century) contains presently only a small amount of manuscripts. Two devastating fires, one at the beginning of the 11th Century, the other in 1423, destroyed the buildings along with a large part of the valuable book collection. Further losses occurred when the monastery had to hand over its most prescious manuscripts to the Court Library in Munich. Due to economic necessity, the monastery had to sell several more of its remaining holdings between the two World Wars. Decimated in this way, approximately 150 medieval manuscripts, including those of the 16th Century remain today in the monasterys collection. These are three codices from the 14th Century, somewhat more than 60 from the 15th Century and close to 30 from the 16th Century. Compared to the possessions of other monastery libraries, the shore of manuscripts in vernacular German is considerable. 115 manuscripts and fragments, among them a few manuscripts in both Latin and German were included in the catalogue. In contrast to those codices that were once owned b< the monastery but are now in possession of American libraries and in Munich, the ones that remain at Nonnberg are entirely works of everyday use without artistic or generally representative importance. As writing material parchment was used only for nine of the manuscripts. The ornamentations are limited to the rubrification system that was customary in the late Middle Ages. Miniatures of higher quality representing saints can be found in some of the small prayer books and devotional writings; wood engravings and etchings are used to ornament 16th Century manuscripts. Only a few of the rather extensive texts contain manuscripts exclusively, in most cases we are dealing with a collection of texts about a variety of topics. They all have themes of religious nature in common. Bible texts like the Epistles of Paul and Evangelistaries, representations of Jesus life and his passion, legends about saints can be found as well as devotional stories, explanations of the Benedictine order; the collection also includes sermons, interpretations of the catechism and ascetic texts, visions and mystical treatises pertaining to pious texts and prayer books.