The manuscript transmits a treatise on Latin grammar, apparently missing its beginning. According to Bursill-Hall (p. 229), this is an anonymous commentary on Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae. The two-column text is divided only by occasional capitals in the same ink as the text. The small minuscule script dates to the thirteenth century (contrary to Scherrer). The parchment leaves often have irregular margins and their size varies from gathering to gathering. On p. 145 can be found the stamp of Abbot Diethelm Blarer (1553–1564). On p. 3 Pius Kolk wrote the former shelfmark D. n. 268 and a note on the content. The cardboard binding with leather-reinforced spine and corners, along with the paper pastedowns and flyleaves (pp. 1/2, 148/149) come from the decades around 1800.
Online Since: 12/20/2023
This fourteenth-century paper manuscript has the oldest work written by Conrad of Mure (ca. 1210–1281), the magister of the chapter school and canon of the Zürich Grossmünster. The Novus Graecismus is a school encyclopedia (with a focus on grammar and vocabulary) in verse, of which eleven fourteenth- and fifteenth-century copies survive (ed. A. Cizek, München, 2009). The text itself is a reworking of Eberhard of Béthune's Graecismus, produced at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Abbey Library of St. Gall's copy, written in a dense cursive on a single column, is incomplete. It includes the preface (inc.: Notitiam gramatice saltem… p. 3), book I (pp. 4–100) and 80 verses of book II (pp. 100–106), that is, two of the work's ten books. Parchment quire guards with fragments of text reinforce the codex (p. 18, 46, 70, 94). The manuscript has a modern cardboard binding with a printed fragment.
Online Since: 12/20/2023
The colophon of this manuscript names the author and title of the work, Eberhard of Béthune's Graecismus, as well as the name of the scribe Johannis Czepilwicz and the date that the copy was completed, 9 August 1386 (p. 150). The Graecismus is a long grammatical poem (more than 4,000 verses) written ca. 1212, and its main sources are the grammarians of antiquity such as Donatus and Priscian. The Graecismus circulated widely. The author of this copy on parchment, Johannis Czepilwicz, seems to be the same as a canon of the Augustine house of S. Maria virginis in Arena in Breslau/Wrocław. Except for a large, decorated first initial, lightly damaged (p. 3), the decoration is limited to rubricated letters and a few initials whose form anticipates fifteenth-century letters with cadels. Given the presence of the stamp of the abbot Diethelm Blarer (p. 25), the manuscript was at the Abbey Library since 1553-1564 at the latest. The manuscript has a limp parchment binding with a spine reinforced in leather.
Online Since: 12/20/2023
On pp. 2–73, this codex contains a total of 153 letters by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus († 402/403), a Roman politician from late antiquity; they are one letter from lib. IX, 10 letters from lib. IV, 44 from lib. V, 18 from lib. VI, 40 from lib. VII, 36 from lib. I and 4 from lib. II. Following the numbering of the edition MGH Auct. ant. 6,1, they are the following letters: IX, 142 (20); IV, 16 (17), 57 (58) – 60 (61), 63 (64), 66 (67) f., 69 (70), 72 (73); V, 3–5, 8, 13, 19 (18), 21 (20), 23 (22), 29 (27) f., 34 (32), 36 (34), 38 (36), 41 (39), 44 (42) – 47 (45), 49 (47) – 51 (49), 53 (51), 55 (53), 57 (55) – 60 (58), 65 (64), 67 (65) f., 68 (66), 70 (68) f., 73 (71), 75 (73), 77 (75) – 80 (78), 84 (82) f., 89 (87), 91 (89) f., 96 (94); VI, 3, 13, 17 (18), 22 (23), 28 (29), 31 (32), 45 (46), 47 (48), 55 (56), 60 (61) f., 65 (66), 72 (73) – 74 (75), 78 (79) – 80 (81); VII, 2f., 9, 11, 16, 19, 21f., 22, 25, 33, 44, 47, 49, 51–54, 56, 60f., 66f., 71–73, 78, 80, 85, 88 (87), 92 (91) – 94 (93), 98 (97) f., 102 (101), 105, 107, 109, 114, 117; I, 28 (22), 31 (25) – 34 (28), 36 (30) – 77 (71), 79 (73) f., 82 (76) – 84 (78), 86 (80), 88 (82), 90 (84) – 93 (87), 96 (90), 99 (93) f., 105 (99), 107 (101); II, 1, 3, 6, 8. Each letter begins with a red majuscule corresponding to two lines. The manuscript concludes on pp. 73–79 with fictional correspondence between the Roman philosopher Seneca and Paul the Apostle.
Online Since: 06/22/2017
Manuscript compilation containing the works of Abbot Bernard of Reichenau (about 978- 1048; Abbot 1008-1048): a fragmentary copy of a long dedicatory codex, delivered by Bernard to King Heinrich III on the occasion of the Synod of Konstanz in the year 1043. Also contains the Epistola de tonis (on psalmodic musical tones), sermons for the high holy days of the Church year, sermons about St. Mark, the patron saint of Reichenau, hymns, sequences dedicated to Saints Ulrich, Gereon, and Willibrord, the holy office devoted to St. Ulrich, and a large collection of letters. Many of the works in this manuscript are the sole surviving exemplars from the second third of the 11th century.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
A significant poetry manuscript from the second half of the 9th as well as the 10th century, produced at the Abbey of St. Gall. Among other items it contains copies of the poem Mosella by Ausonius which recounts a trip on the Rhine and Mosel rivers, a poem in hexameter by Walahfrid Strabo on the life and death of the Irish saint Blathmac (Versus Strabi de beati Blaithmaic vita et fine) and the work De ieiunio quattuor temporum (the so-called Calixtus Letter).
Online Since: 12/23/2008
The parchment manuscript contains Alexander of Villedieu's Doctrinale with the commentary of Master Bertholdus Turicensis. The colophon (p. 123) states the name of this commentator from Zurich, and of the copyist, a certain “Hermannus”, but nothing more is known about them. The volume, laid out in two columns, is carefully articulated: every hexameter of the Doctrinale is generally divided into paragraphs of one or more verses and is copied in a larger size than the commentaries that follow. This commentary is more or less as long as the verses and is moreover full of abbreviations, unlike the text being commented. Elegant pen-flourished initials, typical of upper-Rhine illuminations of the beginning of the fourteenth century, appear throughout this copy. The seal of abbot Diethelm Blarer (p. 59) confirms that the book was at the Abbey Library since 1553–1564 at the latest.
Online Since: 12/20/2023
School manuscript for the St. Gall monastery school, containing the Greek grammar by Dositheus and a prose version of Aratos of Soloi's didactic poem Phainomena which is illustrated with a pen drawing.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
A copy of the 16 books of the Grammar of Priscian of Caesarea (Priscianus maior), written in Carolingian minuscule at the turn of the 8th to the 9th century, probably in northern Italy (Verona?). The manuscript came into the possession of the Abbey of St. Gall during the 9th century under Abbot Grimald.
Online Since: 12/23/2008
The Irish Priscian manuscript of St. Gallen: a copy of the Latin Institutiones Grammaticae by the grammarian Priscian of Caesarea (6th century) with over 9000 glosses, among them 3478 in the Old Irish language. The basis for the reconstruction of the Old Irish language. Contains numerous elaborate pen initials. Written in an Irish scriptorium (Bangor?, Nendrum?) around 845.
Online Since: 06/12/2006
The Vocabularium of Salomon, a 1070-page long alphabetical encyclopedia from the Carolingian period, written in a variety of hands in about 900, probably not in the monastery of St. Gall. The work has not survived in its complete form (entries beginning with Aa through Ab and Y and Z are missing). Generally attributed by the Abbey of St. Gall's internal historiography to the learned Abbot Salomon (890-920), the work is probably based on a Liber Glossarum from the French Abbey of Corbie.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
Manuscript compilation for the monastery school of St. Gall, written by the monk Winithar.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
"The king of palimpsests": parchment fragments from late antiquity that were erased and reused at a later time, sometimes more than once. The scholarly significance of the palimpsests normally lies in the older texts. Some works have only been preserved as palimpsests. This volume, compiled by the librarian Ildefonse of Arx before and after 1800 from single fragments found in the abbey library, contains among many other texts the oldest known copy of the Mulomedicina of Vegetius (5th century), the only known poems and prose by Flavius Merobaudes (5th century) and the so-called "St. Gallen oracles", or "Sortes Sangallenses" (6th century).
Online Since: 12/12/2006
The oldest book in the German language, the so-called "Abrogans" manuscript from around 790, containing the earliest German translation of the Lord's Prayer and Credo.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
The Abba-Ababus-Glossar in palimpsest form, one of the oldest manuscripts in the Abbey Library which survives in book form. This glossary, in which each Latin word is explained using another, was apparently written over older texts from the 5th century in the Cloister of Bobbio. The texts underneath, which vary in legibility, include fragments of the Psalms and of the book of Jeremiah from the Old Testament as well as extracts from works by the grammarian Donatus and the Roman poet Terence. Includes a miniature of a speaker in declamatory pose.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
The Vocabularius sancti Galli – an Old High German glossary written by a missionary 150 years after the death of St Gallus. A manuscript compilation in small format written around 790 in Germany as a kind of diary by a scribe educated in the Anglo-Saxon tradition containing texts treating missionary, theological and educational questions. The glossary, which comes at the end of the manuscript, is arranged thematically rather than alphabetically.
Online Since: 12/12/2006
The most historically significant exemplar of the Benedictine Rule from the time after 810.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
The oldest capitulary from the monastery of St. Gall, containing, among other items, a martyrology, a necrology, the annals of St. Gall and several rules for monks.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
The Latin-Old High German Rule of St Benedict, one of the oldest monuments of the Old High German language.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
Manuscript compilation with mainly historical content, written for the most part in Latin and German, mostly by Gall Kemli, the wandering monk of St. Gall († about 1481). The manuscript contains, among many other texts, the Benedictine Rule, Latin and German riddles and proverbs, the only known copy of a Middle Rheinish Passion play in German from the 14th century, and a sort of curriculum vitae of the scribe Kemli.
Online Since: 12/23/2008