Basel, Universitätsbibliothek
Probably a fragment of one of the Isidore codices from the Monastery of Fulda, which reached Basel during the 16th century, before the abduction and destruction of the library during the Thirty Years’ War. There it apparently served as a possible textual source for a planned edition of Isidore’s works. The codex was produced in Fulda around the second decade of the 10th century. In 1624 this bifolium was used as a document cover.
Online Since: 10/08/2015
Fragment with hagiographic content from a Carolingian manuscript that originated in Fulda.
Online Since: 10/08/2015
These fours strips of parchment were detached from a vocabulary manuscript from the Carthusian Monastery of Basel. They had been used as reinforcing strips in the host volume. Laid out side by side, the strips constitute a part of a scroll of German Sangsprüche. The texts are nine verses by Marner, three verses by Konrad von Würzburg, and eight verses by the Kanzler. The texts were written down around 1300 in the East Alemannic speaking region; the fragments probably were repurposed only a short while later, since the host volume can be dated to 1400.
Online Since: 06/14/2018
Fragment from a Salvianus manuscript, which evidently came to Basel from Fulda at the beginning of the 16th century in order to serve Johannes Sichardus in 1628 as a master copy for printing in the printshop of Henricus Petrus. The manuscript was produced in the first quarter of the 9th century in Fulda. In the second half of the 16th century it was used in Basel as manuscript waste for bindings.
Online Since: 10/08/2015
Fragment of an agrimensor manuscript, which evidently came to Basel from Fulda at the beginning of the 16th century in order to serve Johannes Sichardus in 1628 as a master copy for printing in the printshop of Henricus Petrus. Poggio Bracciolini should have seen it in Fulda in 1417. The manuscript was produced in the first half of the 9th century in Fulda. In the second half of the 16th century it was used in Basel as manuscript waste for bindings. The publication of this fragment by Martin Steinmann in 1992 refuted the hypothesis, held until very recently, that the manuscript Rom, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Pal. lat. 1564 had been the model for Sichardus.
Online Since: 10/08/2015
Two leaves removed from the binding, from a manuscript in Rhaetian minuscule with the rounded cross-stroke of the “t”, which is considered the identifying characteristic of this script. The manuscript can be dated to the 8th/9th century.
Online Since: 06/25/2015
This composite manuscript of theological content originally belonged to the patrician family Gossembrot of Augsburg (late 15th century); via Johannes Oporin († 1568), Eusebius Merz († 1616) and Remigius Faesch († 1667), it finally became part of the university library of Basel in 1823. Except for a single remaining woodcut, various miniatures and woodcuts pasted into the manuscript have been torn out.
Online Since: 06/22/2017
Nikolaus Meyer zum Pfeil, city clerk of Basel, owned a large collection of incunabula of mostly German entertainment literature and himself copied a number of manuscripts, such as this Melusine by Thüring von Ringoltingen in 1471. The paper manuscript contains 38 colored pen and ink drawings, which apparently are by two different painters. Because sheets were lost, the current text has gaps; it is unclear whether illustrations were lost as well.
Online Since: 12/14/2017
The 'twin codex' of Cod. 250 from the Burgerbibliothek of Bern was produced in Fulda. It remains unclear when and how this mathematical manuscript reached Bern. It seems to have left Fulda in the 10th century at the latest, as suggested by the hands of the added texts.
Online Since: 03/29/2019
This manuscript, disbound and surviving only in fragments, was used in 1543 by the printer Heinrich Petri from Basel as model for his edition of the Rabani Mauri Moguntinensis archiepiscopi commentaria in Hieremiam prophetam. Various signs from typesetting as well as traces of printing ink provide evidence for such a use. From Petri’s print shop, the manuscript became part of the collection of Remigius Fäsch and, together with the other holdings of the Museum Faesch, in 1823 it became the property of the University of Basel. The original provenance of the manuscript is not clear.
Online Since: 12/14/2017
Early modern composite manuscript containing the only manuscript textual witnesses for several writings by archbishop Hincmar of Reims (845-882), for example for the treatise De ordine palatii, important for the constitutional history of the Carolingian period.
Online Since: 12/20/2016
This small cardboard volume from the Remigius Faesch Museum combines two fragments of German poetry. The first poem, the Sibyllen Weissagung, dates from the middle of the 14th century and was widely read until the 16th century. It is about the prophetess Sibyl, who visited King Solomon and prophesied the whole future to him until the end of days. The second text, Schondoch's Königin von Frankreich, is about the faithful love of his eponymous heroine, who is accused of adultery by a rejected court marshal and is cast out. It belongs to the genus "Märe" (fable) and is extremely widespread with 21 preserved manuscripts.
Online Since: 06/18/2020
This slim volume belonged to Remigius Faesch (1595-1667), jurist and rector of the University of Basel; together with his vast collection of art and curios, the book became part of the university library in the 1820s. As noted by Remigius Faesch in his catalog under the Libri manuscripti in 4º antiqui, the codex contains “Etliche Teutsche Sermon unn Predigen”, mostly by the Dominican preacher and mystic Johannes Tauler (1300-1361).
Online Since: 10/10/2019
During the Middle Ages, travel to Italy, the so-called “Itinera Italica“, was undertaken primarily for religious reasons (pilgrimages) or for professional purposes (business or commercial travel). But after the Reformation, travel for the sake of education became more common, in Basel as well; its main purpose was an interest in Italy itself and its sights. With this, there came to be travelogues like this one from 1621 by the jurist and rector of the University of Basel, Remigius Faesch (1595-1667).
Online Since: 03/22/2018
This manuscript with excerpts from a ‘Martinellus’ and from Sedulius' Carmen Paschale was produced around the turn from the 8th to the 9th century in the German-Anglo-Saxon area; in the 16th century it apparently came from Fulda to Basel, a center for printing. The manuscript originally included a Vita s. Eulaliae virginis, which has been lost. Remarkable are the scanning aids at the beginning of the Carmen Paschale.
Online Since: 03/29/2019
Little is known about Albin of Clairvaux, also Albuinus of Gorze or Albuinus Eremita, except that around the year 1000 he produced a compilation of moral-theological writings dedicated to a Parisian canon Arnoldus and to Archbishop Heribert of Cologne (999-1021). The present copy is from the 11th or 12th century and is bound in soft leather, which originally was probably long enough to completely cover the book, but so narrow that the body of the block protrudes above and below. In the 15th century it was the property of the Carthusian monastery of Mainz, and it came to the Basel University Library as part of the Remigius Faesch collection.
Online Since: 06/18/2020
Three leaves from different manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud from the 14th and 13th century respectively, used as binding material. Two of the leaves contain fragments from the Mishnah Berachot from the Order Zeraim; the third leaf comprises a piece of the Tractate Avoda Zarah from the Order Nezikin, which regulates the relations between Jews and non-Jews and which discusses the problem of idolatry (“foreign worship”).
Online Since: 06/25/2015
The Avqat Rokhel is a selection of eschatological writings arranged in three ‘books’ with several sections each, attributed to Makhir ben Isaac Sar Hasid of Toledo (14th c.), a student of Judah ben Asher (1270-1349), son of Asher ben Yehiel (Rosh, c.1250-1327). Only its title is identical with a later work on responsa by Joseph Caro (1488-1575) (Ed. Princ. Salonica, 1791). The title of the work is taken from a verse of the Songs of Songs 3: 6 [Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant/ perfumer (אבקת רוכל)?] and can be translated as “The perfumer’s powders”.
Online Since: 10/08/2020
This miscellany, compiled in 15th century Ashkenaz, is a handbook chiefly composed of a plethora of texts on astronomy, astrology, prognoses, popular medicine and medical-astrology, related to illnesses and bloodletting, to which are appended other texts on a variety of subjects: calendrical tables and treatises, ethical and liturgical poems, 13th century halakhic and scholastic philosophical material translated into Hebrew. Furthermore, a small but significant discovery in the manuscript helps to pinpoint the city of Cologne or its surroundings, as a possible location for the production this miscellany.
Online Since: 06/18/2020