The Medieval Manuscripts of Nonnberg / Salzburg

In this scientific catalogue the medieval manuscripts and fragments which are preserved at the Bendictine Nunnery Nonnberg in Salzburg are made accessible to researchers for the first time. The library of the monastery, founded in the early 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 precious 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, 108 medieval manuscripts and 125 fragments (from the early 9th to the middle of the 16th century) remain in the monasterys collection. Compared to the possessions of other monastery libraries, the shore of manuscripts in Latin language is very small. The stock is only including works which are related to the needs of the daily officium dei. Breviaries, psalters, litanies, processionals, antiphonals and hymnals dominate the collection. Compared with these few books all the fragments come with only one exception from latin manuscripts. The reform of the council in Trento had made many of the older liturgical texts useless for the nuns and these manuscripts were most probably reused in a secondary way. This process is proved by the existence of a large number of fragments with liturgical content which were reused as book covers or folders. Only a few of the rather extensive texts in vernacular language 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. In contrast to those codices that were once owned by 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 a small number of 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 devoting writings; wood engravings and etchings are used to ornament 16th century manuscripts.