Basel, Universitätsbibliothek
As its main part, this manuscript, completed in 1474 by Henricus de Bacharach, contains a copy of the widely transmitted Latin-German Vocabularius Ex quo, which was very popular through the end of the 16th century; in addition, it contains a calendar, an astrological table and several short texts by other hands. The main text was decorated by the scribe himself with naive but partly very imaginative initials and drawings. This paper codex came to the UB (Basel University Library) along with the holdings of the Carthusian Monastery of Basel.
Online Since: 06/14/2018
Composite manuscript of philosophical content, owned by Jakob Lauber and even partially written by him. Jakob Lauber from Lindau studied at the then newly founded University of Basel from 1466 until 1475, first in the Faculty of Arts, then canon law in the Faculty of Law. After serving as rector for a short period, he entered the Carthusian Monastery of Basel in 1477; as its prior from 1480 on, he expanded it significantly and reorganized its library. When he entered the monastery, Lauber’s library became the property of the monastery.
Online Since: 06/25/2015
This worn paper manuscript from the Carthusian Monastery of Basel contains several treatises (in part with commentaries) for calculating the annual calendar, in particular for determining the movable holidays, such as the Computus chirometralis of Johannes of Erfurt or the Computus Nerembergensis. In addition, the volume contains a series of Old Frisian and Low German texts: sermons for weddings, recipes, a Latin-German glossary, as well as a short version of the “niederdeutsche Apokalypse”.
Online Since: 10/04/2018
This manuscript, which was written in part by Johannes Heynlin de Lapide and which came to the Carthusian Monastery of Basel with him, contains Johannes de Fonte’s florilegium Auctoritates Aristotelis, a collection of quotations in alphabetical order, two anonymous treatises, as well as treatises by the Franciscan Francis of Meyronnes, by the pseudo John Duns Scotus and by Johannes Breslauer de Braunsberg. A print (5 leaves) of the Tractatus de memoria augenda by Matheolus Perusinus is also bound into this volume.
Online Since: 10/04/2018
In the 4th century AD, the rhetoric teacher Gaius Marius Victorinus wrote explanatory notes on Cicero’s De inventione. In the third quarter of the 15th century, these were copied in a completely uniform script, probably in Frace. The scholar Johannes Heynlin from Basel bequeathed this manuscript, together with the other books in his vast library, to the Carthusian Monastery of Basel. The manuscript shows no signs of use.
Online Since: 06/25/2015
This Lucretius manuscript with the long didactic poem De rerum natura is, based on its content, a descendant of the manuscript which Poggio Braccolini discovered in a German monastery in 1417. This manuscript was written in 1468-69, a few years before the text appeared in print, by Antonius Septimuleius Campanus — according to a note at the end of the text — while he was in prison in Rome. At the latest by 1513, the manuscript was in the possession of the humanist Bonifacius Amerbach from Basel.
Online Since: 06/25/2015
This 15th century composite manuscript was produced in Italy and contains humanist occasional poems and short treatises. The various parts, written in humanist minuscule and humanist cursive, are written by different scribes. This volume belonged to the Basel book printer Johann Oporin († 1568); after his death it remained in the possession of scholars in Basel, until it was given to the library in the 17th/18th century.
Online Since: 03/19/2015
It is not known how this gradual, produced ca. 1200 in the Cistercian abbey of Altenryf/Hauterive, came to Basel from the Cistercian nunnery of Magerau/Maigrauge. It was probably an anonymous gift received in 1906. But its origin can be quite univocally established on the basis of the script and its decoration with silhouette-initials and palmette pen-flourishes, its peculiarities that can also be found in other manuscripts from the same scriptorium. The notation is French, à petits carrés liés. The double formula for the Trinity is a striking aspect of the content in this songbook, which was followed into the modern period. The binding was once repaired, centuries ago.
Online Since: 09/26/2024
This manuscript with the Middle High German epic poem "Laurin" about Dietrich of Bern came to the Basel University Library in a truly adventurous manner. As the head librarian Ludwig Sieber (1833-1891) himself notes in the manuscript, the codex was found on the banks of the Rhine in Basel in 1878. It was then donated to the university library by Ludwig Sieber and his predecessor Wilhelm Vischer (head librarian 1867-1871). The place of discovery left its mark on the manuscript: In parts, the paper and binding are very damaged and fragile and show water damage in various places, especially at the edges of the leaves. The text, however, is still very legible, although incompletely preserved. Fragments of documents in the binding and the pen-and-ink drawing of a flag with a Basel staff make a reference to Basel as a possible place of origin.
Online Since: 12/12/2019
This small-format manuscript contains accounts written by Hans Rot († 1452) and his son Peter Rot († 1487) about their pilgrimages to the Holy Land in 1440 and 1453. It is possible that the notes are in their own handwriting.
Online Since: 06/25/2015
The extensively glossed Rhetorica ad Herennium in the front part of this composite manuscript was copied by Johannes Heynlin, who also brought this book with him to the Carthusian Monastery of Basel. The text from the 1st century BC represents the oldest surviving theory of rhetoric in Latin; it was very popular during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as attested by a vast tradition of more than 100 manuscripts as well as translations into numerous European languages. The volume transmits principles of rhetoric that have remained valid until to this day.
Online Since: 12/14/2018
Fragment with hagiographic content from a Carolingian manuscript that originated in Fulda and was used as manuscript waste in the Basel area in the last quarter of the 16th century.
Online Since: 10/08/2015
Information about the conscription of troops. It names several cities along the Nile (among them Elephantine, Herakleion, Oxyrhynchus) that had to supply soldiers for the Persian commander Šērag. This document, written in Middle Persian (Pahlavi) on parchment, dates from between 619 and 629 AD, the time of the Sassanid occupation of Egypt.
Online Since: 12/14/2017
Didactic poem in Arabic by Avicenna (d. 1037) about the art of healing. The manuscript was written in the 17th century on paper of European provenance and came to the university library in 1682 as a gift from Konrad Harber. According to the canon, the Urǧūza (or Manẓūma) fī ṭ-ṭibb is the Persian scholar’s greatest contribution to medicine. Armengaud Blaise translated it into Latin in Montpellier in 1284 under the title Cantica; a version of the translation, revised by Andrea Alpago, was printed in Venice in 1527.
Online Since: 03/22/2018
Famous collection of wise sayings attributed to the caliph ʿAlī Ibn Abī Ṭālib (deceased 661). Each proverb in Arabic is followed by its translation into Persian in Maṯnawī verses in Ramal meter. The sentences are also known by the title Ṣad kalima or Miʾat kalima and have been translated into Persian several times. This version does not name the translator. This copy was prepared by a well-known calligrapher from Shiraz, Ḥusayn al-Faḫḫār; it was completed in Rabīʿ II 952 h. [= June-July 1545]. The manuscript is from the bequest of the turkologist and scholar of Islamic studies Rudolf Tschudi (1884-1960).
Online Since: 06/13/2019
This Persian-Arabic manuscript, written in Herat by ʿAbdallāh al-Harawī and completed Middle of Šaʿbān 871 h. [= end of March 1467], contains genealogical information about the Prophet Muhammad and his descendants, as well as about people important to the subsequent history of the eastern part of the Islamic world and of Central Asia, among them the Khan of Moghulistan, Tughluq Timur († 1363). Sayyid Ǧalāladdīn Mazīd Bahādur is named as the person who commissioned the manuscript; he probably was part of the local upper class. Interspersed in the text are quotations from the Koran, prayers and poems; an appendix gives exact death dates for three people who passed away in the year 869 h. and who may have been part of the circle of the man who commissioned the manuscript. The decoration of the manuscript is incomplete, as can be seen from an only partially completed rosette (3r) and a missing family tree (26v). The manuscript was owned by Rudolf Tschudi (1884-1960).
Online Since: 12/14/2017
Collection of prayers in the form of litanies (awrād), attributed to a Šayḫ Wafāʾ. The manuscript must have been completed before 1746, because in this year it was consigned to a religious foundation by Bašīr Āġā, a dignitary of the Ottoman court. The author cannot be conclusively ascertained since there are several people known by the name Šayḫ Wafāʾ. This manuscript probably belongs in the context of Islamic mysticism (Sufism), which was firmly established as an institution in the Ottoman-Turkish society of the period. The manuscript comes from the collection of the Islamic scholar and turkologist Rudolf Tschudi (1884-1960).
Online Since: 12/14/2017
Legendary biography of the founder of the Bektashi Order, Ḥāǧǧī Bektāş Velī from Khorasan (Eastern Iran/Afghanistan), written in Ottoman Turkish. The manuscript was written by ʿAbdallāh Ibn Aḥmad el-Merzīfōnī and was completed on 20. Ǧumādā II 1165 h. [= 5 May 1752]. It was part of the collection of oriental manuscripts of the Islamic scholar and turkologist Rudolf Tschudi (1884-1960), from where it came to the University Library Basel.
Online Since: 12/14/2017
This fascicle contains the version of the Paenitentiale Theodori named for this textual witness the ‘Canones Basilienses;’ it was written by two hands from Fulda in an Anglo-Saxon minuscule of the first quarter of the 9th century. Around 1500, this quire was part of the current manuscript F III 15e. This explains the title de conflictu viciorum et virtutum on 1r, which does not fit with the content of the quire. As evidenced by the lost text at the beginning and at the end, N I 1: 3c had previously been part of another codex.
Online Since: 03/17/2016
Leaf from the sixth volume (November-December) of a Fulda Legendary that originally consisted of six volumes, commissioned in 1156 by Rugger, monk at Frauenberg Abbey in Fulda (1176-1177 abbot of Fulda as Rugger II). This fragment contains parts of the Vita s. Chuniberti, the Vita s. Trudonis and the Vita s. Severini; they were probably written by Eberhard of Fulda. The legendary was still used in the middle of the 16th century in Fulda by Georg Witzel(1501-1573) for his Hagiologium seu de sanctis ecclesiae (Mainz 1541) as well as for his Chorus sanctorum omnium. Zwelff Bücher Historien Aller Heiligen Gottes (Köln 1554). More fragments from the sixth volume are also in Basel. It shows that this volume, and at least the 3rd volume (May-June) of the legendary as well, reached Basel, where both evidently were used as manuscript waste around 1580.
Online Since: 06/13/2019