Manuscripts of Augustine in East Germany

Augustine of Hippo (354-430AD) is the most productive and most influential Latin author. His works are transmitted in a large number of medieval manuscripts. In order to make available a reliable workinginstrument for critical editions and to facilitate further research an the history of European libraries, the Commission for Editing the Corpus of the Latin Church Fathers of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 1966 has been providing Ihe series of catalogues concerning "Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der Werke des Heiligen Augustinus", in which all manuscripts containing genuine or spurious works of Augustine are listed. In the context of the submitted project, the research an the manuscripts in East Germany (approximately 1500 manuscripts) should be accomplished within two years by contract of employment. On the basis of library catalogues and secondary literature all relevant manuscripts should be inspected by autopsy and should be listed in two catalogue volumes: a register by works and one by libraries. The results of this research should grant valuable insights into the Cross- linking of medieval culture and the influence of Augustine an the theological discourse in the country of the former Augustinian monk Martin Luther.

The works of the church father and bishop Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), who is to be regarded as the most productive Christian Latin author, have come down to us in thousands of medieval manuscripts which form the basis for all sorts of scientific research. To provide easier access to this huge amount of data the Patristic Commission of the Austrian Acadamy of Sciences has since 1966 been working on a country-by-country series of catalogues that list all manuscripts containing (pseudo-)Augustinian works. For the first time after the political change in East Germany it has now been possible to examine the rich funds of manuscripts of the former GDR and East Berlin for texts by the churchfather. After a thorough check of library catalogues and secondary literature project collaborator Isabella Schiller had an on-the-spot-look at the relevant codices in the years 2005-2006. Their contents were listet and, if necessary, identified by using text databases and further literature. During several stays in the federal states of Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxonia and parts of Saxonia-Anhalt about 1000 manuscripts and far more than 1000 fragments of nearly 30 libraries and archives could be examined. Attention was especially paid to the codices of Berlin, which, once shared out between two State libraries due to the division of the city, are now reunited and which make up the main part of manuscripts containing the works written by Saint Augustin in East Germany. Most of codices concerned are dating back to the 13th to 15th centuries, but there can also be found some precious specimins of the Early and High Middle Ages that were written partly in the 8th or 9th centuries. The so-called Meerman-Collection, a collection of codices going back to the Jesuits in Paris, contains an over-proportional high number of such old manuscripts. It later on was in possession of the probably most important manuscript collector worldwide, the Englishman Sir Thomas Phillipps, and is now at the State Library of Berlin. Concerning the contents, the manuscript tradition of the works of Saint Augustine in East Germany does not differ from the one in the rest of Europe. There are relatively few genuine texts compared to the multitude of works which are attributed to Saint Augustine, but were actually written by other ancient or medieval Christian authors. So, the manuscripts contain a whole lot of collections of sermons and epistles, excerpts, biographies of the saint, but also his most important works Confessiones, De civitate Dei, Enarrationes in psalmos and the treatises on St Johns Gospel. Additional to that, there exists a whole lot of translations, mainly German and Dutch prayers with parallels in the codices of the Benelux countries and West Germany. Especially worth mentioning is the copy of the pseudo- Augustinian treatises on baptisms in the Berlin manuscript Ms. Phill. 1671 which, apart from the not yet examined collections in France, do not seem to be found in any other country.