In the years 1529-1531 the St. Gall humanist, reformer, and politician Joachim Vadian wrote a history of the abbey and city of St. Gall during the high and late middle ages (1199-1491). It goes by the title Grössere Chronik der Äbte (Great Chronicle of the Abbots). In this work, Vadian describes the way the abbey town changed into a self-reliant, independent city and became wealthy from the cloth weaving industry. The historical work is simultaneously a work of heated reformist protest, exposing and often bitingly commenting upon the increasing corruption of church dignitaries and institutions, particularly the Abbots and Abbey of St. Gall since the investiture conflict. (gam)

Online Since: 12/19/2011

The manuscript today known as the “Kleinere Chronik der Äbte von St. Gallen” (Lesser chronicle of the abbots of St. Gall) is an autograph; it describes the history of the Monastery of St. Gall from its beginnings under Abbot Othmar around the year 720 up to the year 1532, that is, to the period of the Reformation. The emphasis initially is on the history of the monastery; from the 13th century onward, what appears more and more is the history of the city of St. Gall, which was able to establish its independence and the Reformation. (goe)

Online Since: 12/14/2018

This manuscript, an autograph, contains a historical-topographical description of “Turgöuw” or Eastern Switzerland (pp. 1-3) as well as of the “Oberbodensee” (pp. 201-227), that is, the villages and areas on the northern (from Bregenz to Überlingen) and southern (from Rheineck to Kreuzlingen) shore [of Lake Constance]; it further contains a historical overview of the development of monasticism and ecclesiastical institutions and of the process of their decay (pp. 3-138), a history of Saint Gall and of the monastery of St. Gall (pp. 138-193), and the history of the Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Caligula (pp. 229-323). (goe)

Online Since: 12/14/2018

This manuscript, an autograph, contains various writings on the monastic way of life and about monasticism in the past and present. It contains, among others, translations of letters by Saint Jerome and of sermons by Bernard of Clairvaux. These are argumentation aids for disputes with proponents of monasteries and convents. (goe)

Online Since: 12/14/2018

This voluminous composite manuscript brings together the Casus Sancti Galli, the history of the monastery of St. Gall from the early and high Middle Ages, and about 50 lives of saints in texts of various lengths, among them those of the St. Gall saints Gallus, Otmar and Wiborada. The manuscript was created in the 1450s, when relations between the monastery and the town of St. Gall were sorted out, and the monastery launched extensive reforms. (gam)

Online Since: 03/22/2017

The impulse for writing the original model of this text, Vadian's “Kleinere Chronik der Äbte” (1544-46) (VadSlg Ms. 44), came from Heinrich Bullinger and Johannes Stumpf; they wanted to make use of Vadian's knowledge of the history of St. Gall for the Eidgenössische Chronik (1547/48) that appeared under Stumpf's name. The chronicle consists of three parts: the first part is about Saint Gall; the second part is a history of the monastery and of the city of St. Gall; the third part gives a historical-topographical description of the city of St. Gall and of Lake Constance. Wolfgang Fechter produced two copies thereof in 1549. The illustrations are by Caspar Hagenbuch. (gug)

Online Since: 12/14/2018

Manuscript compilation from the monastery of St. Gall, produced after 850. In addition to copies of writings by the Venerable Bede and Pseudo-Hippocrates, Letter to Antioch, this codex includes a more significant item: the only exemplar in the world of a letter from the monk Ermenrich of Ellwangen to Abbot Grimald of St. Gall, in which Ermenrich demonstrates his scholarliness and requests that Grimald entrust to him the composition of a biography in verse of the abbey's founder, Saint Gallus. Includes many particulars about daily life in the monastery of St. Gall. (smu)

Online Since: 12/09/2008

The two main components of this manuscript are the lives of the house saints of St. Gall (Gallus, Otmar, Wiborada and Notker Balbulus) and of the apostles and early Christian saints and martyrs, and the Chronicle of the Abbey of St. Gall, from the Casus sancti Galli by Ratpert (612-883) to the Continuatio by Conradus de Fabaria (1204-1234). St. Gall reformer Vadian added marginal notes, some of them quite detailed and critical, to the text describing the history of the cloister. The codex also contains chronicalistic notes about St. Gall and Switzerland (14th/15th centuries), the Reise in das Heilige Land by Steffan Kapfman, and computistic, medical, astronomical and theological texts. On two previously empty pages (pp. 324-325) St. Gall abbey librarian Idelfons von Arx added four recipes for making faded handwriting legible. (sno)

Online Since: 06/22/2010

Manuscript collection produced at the monastery of St. Gall, containing the oldest known surviving version of the Casus sancti Galli by the monk Ratpert, in a copy from about 900. Additional longer texts, written down between the 9th and 13th centuries contain sermons by the early Church fathers, a register of the abbots of St. Gall from the 7th through the 13th centuries, hymns, and excerpts from the Collectio Canonum by Pseudo-Remedius as well as the Micrologus by Bernold of Konstanz. (smu)

Online Since: 12/09/2008

Impressive law manuscript from the Carolingian period, produced in the third quarter of the 9th century, presumably in Reims. It contains the Capitular document collection of Abbot Ansegis of Fontenelle († 833) as well as the forged Capitularies of a certain Benedict Levita. The manuscript was loaned to Etienne Baluze in Paris in 1673/74. (smu)

Online Since: 12/09/2008

Lectures of the St. Gallen reformer Joachim Vadian from 1523/24: a) on the Lives of the Apostles and, b) on his geographic work Epitome trium terrae habitatae partium, taken down in writing by Fridolin Sicher (1490-1546) of Bischofszell, who worked at the Cloister of St. Gall as calligrapher and church organist. (smu)

Online Since: 12/20/2007