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This 12th century manuscript with commentaries on the four Gospels is probably from Alsace. This is suggested by the history of the founding of the Benedictine monastery of St. Faith in Sélestat, added on the last pages. In 1530, the manuscript was owned by Johannes Schornegg, parish priest in Muri.
Online Since: 10/04/2018
This manuscript (third quarter of the 15th century), a collection of theological texts, consists of two parts; it originated in the Carthusian Monastery in Basel, where it was probably also created. This is certain for the second part of the manuscript, which, in addition to the Vita et revelationes by Agnes Blannbekin (Chapters 1-23), also contains extensive excerpts from Lux divinitatis, the Latin translation of Das fließende Licht der Gottheit by Mechthild of Magdeburg, which became the basis for further copies made in the monastery. The model for most of the texts contained in the second part of Cod. A VIII 6 was the manuscript Basel, university library, Cod. B IX 11.
Online Since: 12/13/2013
This small-format parchment manuscript is known as the “Basler Liederhandschrift”; it transmits German and Latin texts in verse and prose, which are primarily spiritual in character and in part are supplemented with musical notation. Among them are texts by Konrad of Würzburg and Walther von der Vogelweide, among others. This manuscript was written around 1300; in the 15th century it was in the Carthusian Monastery of Basel, and in the 17th century it was the property of Remigius Fäsch, a collector from Basel.
Online Since: 12/14/2017
This Gradual was produced in 1071 by the archpresbyter of the Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere; it contains the musical scores for assorted liturgical songs. These melodies set down in written form make CB 74 the oldest record of Roman song.
Online Since: 07/31/2007
This 12th century manuscript from central Italy contains works of music theory by three Latin authors. Among these is Guido Aretinus, a Tuscan monk of the 10th century who is regarded as the inventor of solmisation. Some passages of text in the codex are based on the Institutio musica by Boethius.
Online Since: 07/31/2007
This two-part manuscript contains treatises by Hippocrates as well as his work De urinis and was produced in the first half of the 10th century at St. Gallen.
Online Since: 07/31/2009
The fragments assembled in this collection were removed from their previous volumes by P. Gall Morel in 1858 and bound together into this volume in 1860. They consist of fragments from sequences (two volumes), hymn melodies (such as those still sung to this day in Einsiedeln), three Gloria melodies (the third of which is attributed to Pope Leo IX), three liturgical plays as well as the Novem modi by Hermannus. This manuscript is important to music history, as it is the first instance in Einsiedeln where the neumes are set upon four (incised) staff lines; the form used here represents the Alemannic choral dialect.
Online Since: 11/04/2010
Probably written around 1200 in Hauterive, this Cistercian missal has recently attracted the attention of historians who study St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231). Together with another manuscript from Hauterive, the antiphonary L 301, this manuscript is considered evidence of the rapid spread of the cult of the saint in a Cistercian monastery. Indeed, the general chapter of the Cistercians decided in 1236 to have the name of the saint, who was canonized the previous year, entered into the martyrology and into the calendar of the order. The corresponding entry in our manuscript's calendar, by a second hand, is probably a consequence of this decision.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
This manuscript contains the life of Ulrich by Berno of Reichenau and the lives of St. Gall and St. Othmar. by Walafrid Strabo, as well as a copy of a document on the early history of St. Urban's Abbey, which is among the oldest surviving manuscripts in the St. Urban library.
Online Since: 12/18/2014
A manuscript without beginning. The titel was added later (18th century?). The parchment used is very uneven in quality. In the late Middle Ages, probably towards the end of the 15th century, the manuscript was carefully restored, with parts of the text re-copied. This is a choir book in several volumes, which was used for daily Mass by a community of clerics. Numerous additions from the 14th and 15th century attest to its use at Notre-Dame Abbey in Neuchâtel. Two (of four?) volumes have survived. It can be deduced that they follow the calendar in use at St. Jean Cathedral in Besançon. The first volume contains the sanctoral cycle from May 6th until November 30th. In 1813, the governing council donated the volume to the library of Neuchâtel.
Online Since: 12/17/2015
A manuscript without beginning. The titel was added later (18th century?). The parchment used is very uneven in quality. In the late Middle Ages, probably towards the end of the 15th century, the manuscript was carefully restored, with parts of the text re-copied. This is a choir book in several volumes, which was used for daily Mass by a community of clerics. Numerous additions from the 14th and 15th century attest to its use at Notre-Dame Abbey in Neuchâtel. Two (of four?) volumes have survived. It can be deduced that they follow the calendar in use at St. Jean Cathedral in Besançon. Volume II contains the temporal cycle from Holy Saturday until the last Sunday after Pentecost as well as the sanctoral cycle from April 14th until May 3rd. In 1813, the governing council donated the volume to the library of Neuchâtel.
Online Since: 12/17/2015
Gradual dating from the 12th century, used by the Prémontré order at the Abbey of Bellelay.
Online Since: 04/26/2007
The first liturgical library of the nuns of Fille-Dieu, which today is dispersed across all of Europe, has great significance for the history of the Cistercian Order. The booklet FiD 1 (French musical notation) contains the oldest offices of St. Bernard and of the Trinity, which were introduced into the order in 1175 or shortly thereafter. The flyleaves are remarkable as well. Together with FiD 2, they represent relics of antiphonaries that were copied around 1136/1140 and contain the original Cistercian liturgy, which was copied shortly after 1108 in Metz by monks sent by Abbot Stephen Harding. This liturgy was corrected within the framework of the reforms of Bernard of Clairvaux. The existence of Bernardine drafts had until now been known through antiphonary 12A-B from Westmalle Abbey (Belgium) and through the one from Tamié Abbey 6 (Savoy). Codicological analysis of the flyleaves of FiD 1 and of the fragments of FiD 2 reveals that all pieces come from the Swiss Abbey of Fille-Dieu; they share identical status and common characteristics, irrespective of current holding sites. The same hands and correcting hands can be recognized, the same types of ornamentation and the same later touch-ups, which were done at the earliest in the 16th century, probably by the nuns or by the monks of Hautcrêt Abbey (Oron, VD), which was the mother house of Fille-Dieu until 1536.
Online Since: 03/22/2018
These antiphonary fragments, which were copied around 1136/1140 and were scraped and corrected around 1140/1143, constitute a blank cover. Doubtlessly the parchment pieces of various sizes were glued together by the nuns of Fille-Dieu in order to cover a now lost liturgical formulary. Together, FiD 1 and FiD 2 constitute relics of antiphonaries that contained the primitive Cistercian liturgy. This was defined by Fr. Kovacs (“Fragments du chant cistercien primitif“, ASOC 6 [1950], pp. 140–150) and Chr. Waddell (The Primitive Cistercian Breviary, Fribourg, 2007 [Spicilegium Friburgense 44]) as the liturgy reformed by Stephen Harding shortly after 1108. During this reform, the abbot of Cîteaux forced the order to adopt the antiphonary of Metz, which was in use by the order until the time of the second reform under Bernard of Clairvaux. This second reform was completed in the early 1140s. The existence of Bernardine drafts had until now been known through antiphonary 12A-B from Westmalle Abbey (Belgium) and through the one from Tamié Abbey 6 (Savoy). Codicological analysis of the flyleaves of FiD 1 and of the fragments of FiD 2 reveals that all pieces come from the Swiss Abbey of Fille-Dieu; they share identical status and common characteristics, irrespective of current holding sites. The same hands and correcting hands can be recognized, the same types of ornamentation and the same later touch-ups, which were done at the earliest in the 16th century, probably by the nuns or by the monks of Hautcrêt Abbey (Oron, VD), which was the mother house of Fille-Dieu until 1536.
Online Since: 03/22/2018
The manuscript contains the antiphons, invitatories, and responsories for certain offices of saints, and then the Alleluia verses and sequences for the feast-days of some saints. The majority of the chants are provided with adiastemmatic neumes. A note on p. 112, written before the turn of the 15th century, has neumatic notation on staves. As the leather covering on the spine and the back cover is entirely missing, the Gothic cover joint is very visible from the outside. According to the ownership note on p. 3, in the eighteenth century the manuscript was in the Abbey of St. Johann in Toggenburg.
Online Since: 04/25/2023
This codex contains the best-known work by the Roman poet Publius Papinius Statius, his epic poem about the war of the Seven Against Thebes (Thebais), along with metrical argumenta on lib. II–IV. Two quires containing lib. IV, V. 578 – lib. VII, V. 30 (between pp. 75 and 76) are missing, as well as a bifolium with lib. IX, 671–751 and lib. X, 5–84 (between pp. 128 and 129 as well as 132 and 133). The beginnings of the books and of the metrical argumenta (p. 3, 21, 40, 58/59, 92, 112, 132, 173) are accentuated with initials, partly in two colors (red/green). There are numerous marginal and interlinear glosses, mainly from the 12th and 13th century. On pp. 196–197, probably in the same hand, is the Planctus Oedipodis, Inc. Diri patris infausta pignora (Oedipus' lament about the death of his sons). The poem comprises 21 rhyming stanzas of four lines each, the first of which has neumes on a staff of four lines. This form of notation argues against the manuscript's originating in St. Gall.
Online Since: 06/22/2017
Cod. Sang. 1397 is one of eight fragment volumes (that is, volumes that contain exclusively fragments) of the Abbey Library of St. Gall. Between 1774 and 1785, the St. Gall monks Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger (1756–1823) and Ildefons von Arx (1755–1833) detached numerous fragments from bindings in which they had served for centuries as pastedowns, flyleaves, spine linings, and endleaf guards. At an advanced age, Ildefons von Arx had the fragments bound in eight thematically-organized bindings and dedicated these in 1822 to his friend Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger. Chiefly in the twentieth century, researchers found additional, small fragments in bindings, from which they were then removed and added to the existing fragment volumes or into the collection of fragments. From 2005 to 2006 the extensive fragment volume Cod. Sang. 1397 was disbound for conservation reasons. The fragments were rebound (in the same sequence) in 23 folders (“Ganzpapierbroschuren”). The new, now authoritative pagination begins with 1 in each folder and includes only the fragments (and not the empty paper leaves). To be cited (for example): St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 1397.1, pp. 1-2 (= Cod. Sang. 1397, Folder 1, pages 1-2). The ninth folder of Cod. Sang. 1397 contains fragments with musical notation from seven liturgical manuscripts from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, and from a printed breviary.
Online Since: 09/06/2023
Manuscript compilation by the wandering monk of St. Gallen, Gall Kemli († 1481) with a wide variety of copied texts and original compositions in Latin and German languages (Diversarius multarum materiarum), for instance: recipes for medicines, instructions in liturgical song, exorcism, scribal rules, indulgences, etc. Affixed into the manuscript are twelve colored single page prints from the 15th century, which are valuable–in some cases unique–exemplars in the history of European printing.
Online Since: 04/26/2007