PREMISES

Pre-modern monastic communities ensured integration through narratives by which the identity of the institution was framed and which were intended to provide offers of identification for the lifeworld of their members. The history of religious houses was e. g. communicated to monks and nuns by way of founder chronicles and foundation books. The same purpose served other more monumental media hybrids which, in contrast to manuscripts, were in principle immobile, namely inscriptions or inscription-based text/image combinations, Inscriptions in monasteries can promote an "internal" communication aimed at the self- perception and self-justification of the convent, but they can also address a variety of visitors, thus creating an external impact. This also includes the dialogue with the potential public of benefactors from the economically potent local bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy. Both were important for material subsistence and recruitment of personnel, in the rural and especially in the urban contexts. The Augustinian canons abbey of Klosterneuburg, located in the immediate vicinity of Vienna, vigorously used epigraphic writing as part of a complex media ensemble to communicate elements of its self-perception both "internally" and "externally. The fact that the founder, Margrave Leopold III of Austria was buried in the chapter house of the monastery signifies a core point of the canon`s self- perception and representation up to the present day. However, the monastery also functioned as a high-ranking burial place for a large number of other deceased persons. The funerary monuments in the cloister and chapter house reflect relationships (of benefactors) to the monastery as an epigraphic mirror of liturgical and social memoria, and help to differentiate the negotiation of "outside" and "inside" of the sepulchral and social space of the monastery in a manner closely interlocking different media. The fact that, beyond the narrower urban space of Klosterneuburg, of which the monastery itself appears as the genuine centre, there was also a strong social and topographical connection to nearby Vienna and to the court of the Austrian sovereigns as an extended "catchment area", clearly multiplied the complexity of spatial semantics. PREMISES strives to find out how inscribed artefacts and their text/image combinations added to the overall media strategies of moulding self-perception and self-representation of the chapter by drawing on traditions and introducing innovations of monastic historiography. The project relies on comprehensive source material, taking into account not only the epigraphic monuments still extant on site, but also the archival, textual, and pictorial transmission of objects now lost. PREMISES will for the first time produce a complete catalogue of the pre-modern epigraphic heritage of the Abbey of Klosterneuburg up to the year 1683 according to the model of the edition series Die Deutschen Inschriften.