Zürich, Zentralbibliothek
The Zentralbibliothek Zürich (ZB; Central Library of Zurich) is the cantonal, municipal and university library of Zurich. Its department of manuscripts holds manuscripts and manuscript fragments dating from the 6th to the 21st century. The collection contains over 600 medieval codices, mostly in Latin or German, as well as over 30,000 modern volumes. Special mention should be made of the manuscripts from the library of the reformed Grossmünster Church of Zurich; this collection includes many volumes from Zurich monasteries that were dissolved, as well as the manuscript collection from Rheinau Abbey. Also significant are the archives of various families and guilds of Zurich, as well as more then 650 bequests from many people important in the history of Zurich such as Bullinger, Bodmer and Breitinger, Lavater, Pestalozzi, Gottfried Keller and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Finally, there is a collection of letters that consists of over 200,000 letters.
The main portion of the manuscript Ms. Rh. hist. 27, written in the early 9th century, contains the so-called Codex of Fraternisation of Reichenau. Codices of Fraternisation contain a list of the members of the monastery's confraternities who were required to include the other living or deceased members of the confraternity into their daily prayers. The zone of influence was large, reaching from Reichenau in the South to Monteverde and Conques, from Mondsee in the East to Fulda and St. Trond in the North as well as to Jumièges in the West. Over 38.000 names are documented. The earliest entries have been continuously amended and updated for several centuries. At the end of the volume, following the Codex of Fraternisation, there are 15 leaves of parchment from the 10th-12th centuries containing lists of friars, additional names and transcriptions of charters. At the beginning of the volume there are straps glued on paper containing agreements of fraternisation and obituaries from the 14-16th centuries.
Online Since: 03/31/2011
This codex contains a rare illuminated manuscript constituted entirely by illuminated pages, for each of which only a succinct caption is given, most often only a line of text, and which therefore provides exceptional historical image-sources for numerous domains. The pictures presented here of military technology were perhaps originally part of a medieval house book. A typical collector’s item, this illuminated manuscript underscores the collection character of the Rheinau conventual library, whose librarians and abbots were expressly on the lookout for rare books.
Online Since: 06/09/2011