Illuminated manuscripts in Graz University Library. 1200-1300

The onset of the digital age has fundamentally changed the conditions for research into medieval book painting. Previously inaccessible works are increasingly being presented online, where they can be viewed at any time and this also applies to the holdings of the University Library in Graz, one of the most important collections of medieval manuscripts in Austria. These worldwide efforts to make important cultural historical sources available online have led to a flood of images that require explanation, while also offering a completely new basis for researching medieval manuscripts. By undertaking an art historical investigation of the Graz manuscripts of the thirteenth century, the proposed project seeks to exploit these new possibilities and to improve our understanding and the historical contextualization of medieval book painting, which is increasingly present but still little researched in comparison to other genres. As in the catalogues of the established series Die illuminierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln in Österreich (Illuminated Manuscripts and Incunabula in Austria), which is edited by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, it is intended that the manuscripts` physical aspects be examined in detail and described, before a grounded attempt is made to establish the place and date of creation. The usual method for analysing decoration is stylistic comparison, which in the proposed project will be further refined by extending the vocabulary used and looking closely at book decoration commonly regarded as secondary, such as pen-flourished initials and simple drawn ornament. This will provide a framework for dating more sophisticated painted initials, while also making the finished catalogue an authoritative guide for dating other medieval manuscripts. Beyond this, the first phase of the project showed that it is necessary and worthwhile to investigate the conditions in which books were produced. In order to make a credible attempt to ascertain where any work was created, it is important to establish how far book production in thirteenth-century Austria actually took place in monasteries, whether there are signs of commercialization, what role was played by professional, perhaps itinerant book painters (and scribes), and how the book trade developed during this period. As the project report shows, the Graz manuscripts offer an outstanding basis for such investigations. It has already become clear, firstly, that the thirteenth century saw the flourishing of an international book trade enabling cross-border knowledge transfer; and, secondly, that the Graz material not only allows the development of book painting in Styria to be reconstructed, but also casts new light on book painting in other regions and centres of book production. Of course, the intellectual exchange that becomes manifest here also affected the content of figural book decoration, which needs to be interpreted with reference to the particular horizons of the patron and book painter concerned. The results of the project are relevant for all research on European book painting of the Middle Ages. It is planned to publish them, on the one hand, in the form of a printed catalogue that would also be put online as an e-book in the freely accessible E-Book-Library of the FWF; and, on the other, in an adapted form within the online presentation of the special collections of the University Library in Graz.

Manuscripts are one of the most substantially preserved forms of evidence from the Middle Ages, providing a valuable source that helps us to understand the past and its effects on the present. The holdings of such works in the University Library in Graz is after the National Library in Vienna the largest of its type among Austrian public collections. The recently concluded investigation of thirteenth-century manuscripts in Graz, a body of material that had previously received little or no art-historical treatment, has enabled a significant part of this collection to be more precisely embedded in its historical-cultural context. New findings have also been made on the individual books including on questions of origins and historical ownership, as well as aspects of their decoration, such as iconography and the function of figural ornament. In this way, a more solid foundation has been created for assessing the historical significance of the investigated manuscripts, which will be relevant for all areas of medieval research and more clearly reveals the value of the manuscripts as important monuments for society. The project also used detailed observation of individual works as a basis for addressing broader questions, providing new insights into manuscript production in the thirteenth century, as well as into the educational, local, and cultural history of the regions where the books were created. This has implications for Styria, Carinthia, and Slovenia the locations of the monasteries whose libraries later formed the Graz collection but also for other areas: the investigation of book decoration revealed not only local production within the monasteries themselves or in their more or less immediate surroundings but also showed that a substantial part of the material was imported from other European centres and regions, such as Paris and Bologna, as well as South France, England, and Belgium. Such localizations of the Graz manuscripts mean that our understanding of manuscript production in these places has also been significantly improved.