A German language edition of the life history of the St. Gall patron saints Gallus, Magnus, Otmar and Wiborada. Includes color portraits of saints Wiborada and Otmar (the latter bound into the wrong location in the manuscript; the portraits of Gallus and Magnus have been lost). The manuscript also includes a German translation of the Proverbs ("Sprüche der Altväter") as well as some brief spiritual texts for nuns, written down and most likely translated into German by Friedrich Kölner (or Colner), a Reformist monk originally from the cloister of Hersfeld in Hessen, who was a member of the Cloister of St. Gall between 1430 and 1436. (smu)

Online Since: 12/09/2008

Composite manuscript containing lives of saints in verse and other theological texts: life of St. Gall, in verse (Vita Galli metrice), possibly written by an Irish scholar (Moengal?) around 850 (pp. 3-175); miracles of Mary, in verse (Miracula Marie) (pp. 176-191); Vita sancti Viti, in verse (pp. 192-204); Vita scolastica by Bonvicinus de Ripa, in verse (pp. 205-241); Facetus de vita et moribus (pp. 242-267); Liber floretus by a Pseudo-Bernard (pp. 268-287); Sermones by Peregrine of Opole (pp. 306-352); Sermones by Jacobus de Voragine (pp. 353-363); and Sermones dominicales, pars aestivalis et per totum annum by Peregrine of Opole and Jacobus de Voragine (pp. 368-452). (dor)

Online Since: 09/23/2014

The paper manuscript from the second half of the fifteenth century contains three saints’ lives in German: St. Benedict (pp. 1-57), St. Gall (pp. 63-294) and St. Otmar (pp. 299-372). While the first of these three lives is the German version taken from the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I, the two that follow resemble, at least partially, the translations of the Benedictine Friedrich Kölner. The texts are carefully copied in a single column by a single scribe and decorated with simple initials painted in red. The brown-leather binding, dating from the fifteenth/sixteenth century, is blind-stamped. At the latest by the sixteenth century, this copy belonged to the community of lay brothers of the abbey of St. Gall (p. 374). (rou)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

The oldest German language version of the life history of St. Gall patron saint Notker Balbulus († 912), produced by Hans Conrad Haller (1486/90-1525), a member of the St. Gall religious community, for the Benedictine nuns of the Cloister of St. George above St. Gall in the year 1522. With decorated initials and borders. Following the vita are German prayers as well as a German translation of the tract Exhortationes ad monachos ("Von der geistlichen Ritterschaft der Mönche" or the "Exhortations to Monks") by Abbot Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim (1462-1516). (smu)

Online Since: 12/09/2008

This German-language manuscript gathers together a series of strongly mystical stories and prayers. The first two thirds (pp. 1–259) are taken up by three translations of texts by Elisabeth of Schönau, all of which have as their object St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins. Then follows the legend of St. Cordula (pp. 260–264). The remaining texts, with the exception of an excerpt from Mechtild of Hackeborn (pp. 295–302) are all prayers, mostly addressed to Mary and often with extensive instructions for the prayer. The book is rubricated throughout, and it has two simple pen-flourished initials (p. 1, 162); the rubric on p. 1 is written in a display script. Inside the book can be found a bookmark made of four thin cords knotted at the top. The binding comes from the fifteenth century and is decorated with stamps and decorative lines. In 1794, Ildefons von Arx purchased the manuscript from the collection of the dissolved convent of Poor Clares of St. Dorothea of Freiburg im Breisgau (ownership marks p. 1 and p. 320; purchase note, p. 1). (mat)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

This manuscript contains selections from the Elsässischen Legenda Aurea, an important Upper-German rendition of James of Voragine’s legendary. The selections are largely limited to the saints of the summer section. The first part of the manuscript (pp. I–64) is written in a hand that copies the legends of John, Peter, and Paul. A second, somewhat less skilled, hand writes the rest, beginning with the only verse text of the manuscript (the Barbara-legend, starting on p. 66). This verse text is the only text that the Baroque label on the spine mentions. Also from the Legenda Aurea is the account of the Einsiedeln Engelweihe (pp. 191–196). Both parts contain rubrics and restrained rubrication in a hand different from those used for the text. The beginning and end of the manuscript are missing; the binding, restored in the nineteenth century, dates from the fifteenth century. (mat)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

Composite manuscript from a lay community of St. Gall (from Scarpatetti, p. 137), partly written and compiled around 1505 by the St. Gall Conventual Joachim Cuontz († 1515). The two most substantial parts of the manuscript are the life and miracle of St. Anne (pp. 49-137) and an incunable (Inc. Sang. 995; Hain 12453) bound together with the manuscript of the German version of the Passio S. Meinradi, decorated with 37 woodcuts and printed between 1496 and 1500 by Michael Furter in Basel (pp. 141−195). The manuscript furthermore contains medical advice, for instance on the use of St. Benedict's thistle or a remedy for the plague (pp. 15−21; p. 138); translations of sequences into German (pp. 5-9); numerous prayers and exempla, especially to Mary, Anne and Joachim (pp. 25-44); as well as a letter, surviving in fragments, from Silvester, provost of the Monastery of the Augustinian canons of Rebdorf in Eichstätt to the sisters of the Convent of Pulgarn in Upper Austria, regarding poverty in the convent (pp. 44-48). (smu)

Online Since: 06/25/2015

The paper manuscript was copied in a rapid cursive by Friedrich Kölner during his stay at the monastery of St. Gall between 1430 and 1436. It contains first the lives of the Apostles in the German translation of the summer part of the Golden Legend (pp. 6-269). There then follow, also in German, the sermon Von den Zeichen der Messe, composed by the Franciscan Berthold of Regensburg (pp. 269-284), Die Legende von den Heiligen Drei Königen, composed by Johannes von Hildesheim (pp. 284-389), a Pilatus-Veronika-Legende (pp. 389-400), a Greisenklage (pp. 400-402), and finally the Fünfzehn Vorzeichen des Jüngsten Gerichts (pp. 402-403). According to Cod. Sang. 1285, p. 11, the manuscript entered the possession of the Abbey Library as part of the acquisition of manuscripts by Johann Nepomuk Hauntiger, which took place between 1780 and 1792. (rou)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

The volume was copied by several fourteenth-century hands. Its contents were either planned to be more extensive or it is not completely preserved. A summary of contents on p. 3, as well as a slip of paper glued to the front cover with a post-medieval table of contents list seven parts, of which, however, only four are present: excerpts from the lives of the Monastic Fathers in two parts (pp. 3–28 and 28–53), excerpts from Gregory the Great’s life of St. Benedict (pp. 53–79), and excerpts from the Purgatorium Patricii (pp. 80–91). An index of these four parts can be found on pp. 92–95, followed by two sermons of Pope Innocent III (pp. 96–111) and passages from other sermons (pp. 111–114). On the front and back parchment flyleaves appear numerous notes and ownership entries of different sorts, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. According to them, in the fifteenth century, the book belonged to the Leper chapel of St. Gallen. The medieval half-leather binding was reused in the seventeenth century for a new binding. (mat)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

This manuscript contains German-language lives of the saints: the “Lives of the Fathers” (Vitaspatrum) (pp. 5a–482a), the Life of Saint Meinrad (pp. 482a–501b) and the Life of Saint Fridolin, a translation of the Latin Vita of Fridolin written by Balther von Säckingen (pp. 502a–541a). The main scribe of this codex was Johannes Gerster, citizen of Säckingen, who identifies himself on p. 361 and p. 541, each time including a date. Several pen drawings: tree with blossoms and fruit (p. 361), young man in secular clothing (p. 482), sketches of dragons (p. 528 and p. 541), rosette (p. 541). In the 17th century, this manuscript was in the possession of the Convent of the Poor Clares in Freiburg i. Br. (note p. 3); only in the 18th century was it purchased for the Monastery of St. Gall. (sno)

Online Since: 10/08/2015

German version of the life of Jesus according to the four gospels, in an Alemannic recension. With colorful initials and 21 filled initials, drawn in pen and usually colored. The scribe and probably also first owner, Rudolf Wirt, gives his name at the end of the text on p. 463 as well as the date of the completion of the manuscript on January 9, 1467. The volume originated in one of the women’s cloisters of St. Gall and came to the St. Gall Abbey Library between 1780 and 1792. (dor)

Online Since: 06/23/2014

The folio-sized volume transmitting a collection of legends from James of Voragine probably comes from the personal collection of Kemli, monk of St. Gall; in any case, it is expanded and corrected in his own hand. The arrangement of the manuscript is therefore not unitary. The older part is copied in two columns by a late fourteenth-century hand; the texts on the leaves inserted and annotated by Kemli are in a single column (pp. 2–20, 164–189, 210–211, 445–462, 471–474). The Legenda sanctorum (pp. 2–452) is supplemented by a Materia de exorcismo et coniurationibus (pp. 456–470) added by Kemli. To this text there are some additions, pp. 463–470, made in an another hand from the second half of the fifteenth century, which in turn were expanded by Kemli (p. 470). On pp. 471–473 follows the final text, written in Kemli’s hand, containing a legend of the Eleven Thousand Virgins; before the beginning of the text a half-page leaf was glued. Probably it was the woodcut with the ship of St. Ursula that Ildefons von Arx detached (Kemli-Kat., Nr. 31). The fifteenth-century binding has been repaired several times and has two leather covers and, on the front cover, a title label written by Kemli. (mat)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

Legendary of St. Gall: contains, among other items, the German lives of the St. Gallen Saints Gallus, Magnus, Otmar and Wiborada, illustrated with 142 vivid images. (smu)

Online Since: 06/12/2006

Collection manuscript, 15th century, from the Dominican convent of St. Katharina in St. Gall. This German-language manuscript is made up of five fascicles and contains a treatise on the Passion of Christ (“Vierzig Myrrhenbüschel vom Leiden Christi‟): the story of the foundation of the Dominican convent of St. Katharinental near Diessenhofen; the "Diessenhofener Schwesternbuch" and the "Tösser Schwesternbuch"; the legends of saints Elizabeth of Hungary, Margaret of Hungary, Ida of Toggenburg and Louis of Toulouse as well as a short excerpt from the Liber specialis gratiae of Mechthild of Hackeborn in German translation. (fas)

Online Since: 12/12/2006

This manuscript, probably written in the Benedictine Allerheiligen Abbey in Schaffhausen, contains, besides many shorter, often later added texts, a number of German-language lives of the saints (Maurice and the Theban Legion, Mary Magdalene, Elizabeth of Hungary), meditative texts (on Maundy Thursday, on the Passion of Christ, the Steinbuch of a certain Volmar), and the Book of Founders of Allerheiligen Abbey. The latter is a free adaptation of the 12th century legend of the founding of the Abbey on the Rhine. Using the cut leather (cuir-ciselé) technique, an artist cut central figures of the foundation legend (probably St. Benedict, Eberhard of Nellenburg, Burkhard of Nellenburg, Wilhelm of Hirsau?) into the front and back of the cover. On p. 204, there is a pen sketch of the saints Benedict and Bernard. At an unknown date, the manuscript came into the possession of the scholar Aegidius Tschudi of Glarus and, together with his literary estate, was bought by the Monastery of St. Gall in February 1768. (smu)

Online Since: 12/13/2013

This manuscript contains the main work of the Parisian early scholastic Petrus Comestor († 1179), his Historia scholastica; completed around 1169-1173, it is a summa of biblical history from Creation to Ascension. It is written by three late 12th/early 13th century hands, with marginal notes by several hands from the 13th to the 15th century. At the bottom of p. 2 is the writer's name, Uolricus. (sno)

Online Since: 06/18/2020

This composite manuscript from the estate of the humanist Aegidius Tschudi (1505-1572) of Glarus consists of 12 individual sets of papers, purchased by the monastery ofSt. Gall in 1768 and bound in the years thereafter. This volume, mostly written by Tschudi himself, contains, among others, lists of bishops and other important office holders in the dioceses of Konstanz, Strasbourg, Basel and Chur; documents concerning the history of the Monasteries of St. Gall, Einsiedeln, Muri, Pfäfers, Engelberg and their abbots; a German copy of the vita of St. Meinrad; copies of documents of several southern German monasteries; and – the most important text – the only surviving copy of excerpts from the "Reichsgutsurbar" of Churrätien from the first half of the 9th century. The original did not survive; it was no longer available at the time of Tschudi, who instead copied an incomplete version from the 10th to 12th century. (smu)

Online Since: 12/20/2012

The two main components of this manuscript are the lives of the house saints of St. Gall (Gallus, Otmar, Wiborada and Notker Balbulus) and of the apostles and early Christian saints and martyrs, and the Chronicle of the Abbey of St. Gall, from the Casus sancti Galli by Ratpert (612-883) to the Continuatio by Conradus de Fabaria (1204-1234). St. Gall reformer Vadian added marginal notes, some of them quite detailed and critical, to the text describing the history of the cloister. The codex also contains chronicalistic notes about St. Gall and Switzerland (14th/15th centuries), the Reise in das Heilige Land by Steffan Kapfman, and computistic, medical, astronomical and theological texts. On two previously empty pages (pp. 324-325) St. Gall abbey librarian Idelfons von Arx added four recipes for making faded handwriting legible. (sno)

Online Since: 06/22/2010

The first part of this volume contains a copy of the text En Damvs Chronicon … Evsebii …, published in 1529 by the humanist Johannes Sichardus (1499−1552) in the printer’s workshop of Heinrich Petri in Basel. This printed work contains the Universal Chronicle by Eusebius of Caesarea and its continuation by the Church Father Jerome, the Universal Chronicle by Prosper of Aquitaine, the historiographic work De temporibus by the Florentine Matteo Palmieri (1406−1475), the short Chronica by Cassiodorus, and the Chronicon by Herman the Cripple. The printed part is preceded (on Fol. Av) by a handwritten computistic-calendric table for the years 1501 to 1540 by the scholar Aegidius Tschudi (1505−1572) of Glarus. The second, handwritten part of the volume contains a copy of the text of the first four parts of the history of the monastery of St. Gall, the Casus sancti Galli. Aegidius Tschudi had his collaborator Franciscus Cervinus of Schlettstadt, who had a humanist university education, copy the historiographic works of the St. Gall monks Ratpert (pp. 1−37) and Ekkehart IV (pp. 38−253), the abbey chronicle of those who anonymously continued it for the years 975 to 1203 (pp. 255-305), as well as the continuation by Conradus de Fabaria about the fate of the abbey between 1203 and 1234 (pp. 307-367). The printed as well as the handwritten parts contain numerous marginal notes in Tschudi’s hand. The volume was owned by Tschudi (Sum Aegidii Schudi Claronensis; ownership note on the front inside cover); as part of Tschudi’s book collection, this volume was sold to St. Gall Abbey in 1768 by his heirs. (smu)

Online Since: 10/13/2016

This manuscript, written in the 15th century by a "sehr routinierten und stilsicheren Schreiber" (Scarpatetti, S. 194; "a very practiced and stylistically confident copyist"), contains the first four parts of the great St. Gall historical work Casus sancti Galli: the history of the monastery by the Monk Ratpert (pp. 3-39), the Casus sancti Galli by the Monk Ekkehart IV (pp. 40-257), the Casus sancti Galli by the anonymous continuators for the years 975 to 1203 (pp. 259−301), and the continuation of the history of the monastery of St. Gall by Conradus de Fabaria from 1232/35 (pp. 317−370). The manuscript contains numerous annotations in the hand of the Swiss scholar Aegidius Tschudi (1505−1572), but it is not part of his collection of books, which came to the St. Gall Abbey Library in 1768. Tschudi must have consulted and studied the manuscript during a visit to the Abbey Library of Saint Gall. (smu)

Online Since: 10/13/2016