Books for New Ideas. Exploring the Melk Reform in Göttweig

The proposed project will investigate the impact of the Melk Reform, the most important movement of renewal of monastic spirituality in the 15th century, on the manuscript collection and book production of Göttweig monastery. Göttweig monastery and its library are a particularly good case- study since Göttweig was the first Benedictine convent to follow Melk in the reform in 1418 and it is clear that this must have given a special input to this convent and left traces in Göttweigs manuscript holdings. So, the thorough study and historical contextualization of the 15th century manuscripts in Göttweig library will form the basis of the project. Although there has been done a lot of research on the installment and development of the reform in Melk there has been only little investigation on the effect of the reform in neighbouring Benedictine houses. We know of 200 out of 800 manuscripts dating to the 15th century in Melk that are concerned with matters of the reform and reflect the progress of its concepts. Since a comparable analytic survey for Göttweig is missing the proposed project will be the first enterprise to record all manuscripts dating to the 15th century of Göttweig library with a special focus on the Melk Reform. Preliminary work indicated that there are at least 40 manuscripts in Göttweig library closely connected to the Melk Reform, and more discoveries are to be expected. These will be explored in detail. The analysis of the recorded data will follow questions after the distribution of authors relevant for the reform, the influences of masters of the University of Vienna and the emerge of the vernacular in texts and books written in the 15th century. The project promises an unprecedented overview on the holdings of an important monastery associated with the Melk Reform and its analysis. The results will be published online in open access and in print: manuscript descriptions and selected digitized facsimiles will be available on manuscripta.at, the Austrian manuscript portal hosted by the Division of Codicology and Palaeography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Moreover, project results will be presented on national and international workshops and conferences as well as published in a range of articles.

The project investigated the effects of the Melk Reform on the book production of Göttweig Abbey, which was the first Benedictine monastery after Melk to join the reform in 1418. The focus of the study was the systematic recording and historical contextualization of the 15th century manuscripts in Göttweig library, whose identification and classification within the reform process was analyzed in comparison with the texts written at the same time in Melk Abbey. Due to the size of its library and its privileged location in the vicinity of Melk Göttweig Abbey was particularly well suited as a case study for this research question and can be seen as a precedent for the implementation of reform ideas and writings. In the course of the project Göttweig manuscripts dating to the 15th century were examined and recorded on the Austrian manuscript portal manuscripta.at. Based on extensive preliminary work, around 40 manuscripts were expected to have been created in direct connection with the Melk Reform - this number could be supplemented by further 11 codices, whose significance for the ideas of the Melk Reform were previously unknown to international research. In the course of the project 58 manuscripts were catalogued using the method of a detailed description, 50 manuscripts were catalogued in the so called 'modified detailed description' which allows a variation of the details given in order to proceed the workflow, to another 150 manuscripts basic data were given. In the course of the project watermarks of at least 100 paper manuscripts were analyzed and presented in the database WZMA.at. In addition to that 30 manuscripts of high importance were digitized and are now available in open access on manuscripta.at, to another 9 manuscripts photographs of the Hill Monastic Library Project are available open access. Accompanying the cataloguing of manuscripts the project team was able to publish a monograph on the history of the Göttweig library. Project results were also presented internationally in articles and lectures. The most important result is that although the connection to the Melk reform movement led to increased writing activity in Göttweig, no independent Göttweig reform profile can be discerned from the resulting texts. What is striking is the absence of standard texts, which, according to the results of previous research, obviously form the basis of the reform. A previously assumed increase in vernacular texts for laymen or the nuns of the double monastery could also not be confirmed on the basis of the manuscript review. However, a previously unknown German-language reform text was discovered. Moreover, it became clear that the works of central authorities of the reform, masters and doctors of the University of Vienna, were also copied and received in Göttweig.