This manuscript contains Burchard of Strasbourg’s Summa casuum (pp. 3a-274a), followed by a short explanation of the effectiveness of indulgences (pp. 274a-275b). The script, a textualis, suggests the 14th century. The binding seems to be one of the rare bindings in the Abbey library with a board attachment in romanesque technique. (len)

Online Since: 10/08/2020

This manuscript contains Burchard of Strasbourg’s Summa casuum (pp. 7a-261a); according to the colophon (p. 261a), it was completed by the clergyman Fridolinus Vischer in the parish of Mollis in Glarus, probably on April 4, 1419. In the course of the 15th century, notes on personages from the Old Testament were added at the beginning of the manuscript (pp. 4-5), and brief canonical and theological explanations on spiritual kinship, on legitimate and illegitimate contracts and purchases, on tithes and found objects were added at the end of the manuscript (pp. 261b-271b). (len)

Online Since: 10/08/2020

This manuscript consists of three parts. The first part (p. 1-90) with the summa of penitence or of confessions by Heinrich von Barben (pp. 3-90), is written in textualis and, according to the colophon (p. 90), it was completed on February 24, 1309. The second part (pp. 91-146) contains a catalog of questions for confession (p. 91a-145a), written in a 13th or 14th century textualis, which was supplemented in the 15th century with information on the solution of legal abbreviations (pp. 145a-145b). The third part (pp. 147-206) contains a collection of documents and formulas from Northern Germany (pp. 147a-205b), written in the 14th century by two different hands in a semi-cursive minuscule and in a cursive book hand. The three-part manuscript can likely be found in the catalog of St. Gall Abbey from 1461. (len)

Online Since: 10/08/2020

This paper manuscript has cardboard binding from the 18th/19th century. It was probably written entirely by the secular priest, Mattias Bürer, whose books devolved after his death (1485) to the Abbey of St. Gall. The manuscript contains chiefly a verse summary, ascribed to Adam von Aldersbach, of the famous textbook of canon law and pastoral theology by Raymund of Peñafort (pp. 7–123). In addition to interlinear glosses, a thick apparatus of glosses can be found in certain places in the margins. After two short texts follows a long commentary on the preceding versified work (pp. 135–264). (len)

Online Since: 04/25/2023

This paper manuscript brings together various texts of pastoral theology on the sacraments, and particularly on confession, as well as commentaries on the doctrine of the faith as well as sermons. Among these texts are the Summula de summa Raimundi of Magister Adam [Adamus Alderspacensis] (pp. 99–138) and the Liber Floretus (pp. 139–151), both written in verse. The scribe identifies himself as Johannes in a colophon on p. 138. The manuscript presents numerous annotations from the hand of the learned and wandering St. Gall monk Gallus Kemli (1480/1481). (len)

Online Since: 04/25/2023

This voluminous paper manuscript was written by Gallus Kemli († 1480/81) approximately in the period 1466 to 1476. It transmits tools, compendia, and summaries of theology, canon law, liturgy, and confession and penance, as well as prayers and chants with German Plainchant (Hufnagel) notation for the mass, a rituale, and, finally, further prayers, blessings, sermons and exhortations, partly in Latin and partly in German. The manuscript is bound in a limp wrapper with a red leather cover. Gallus Kemli, monk of Saint Gall, who led an erratic itinerant life outside the abbey, left at his death a large collection of books, including this one. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

This paper manuscript contains a commentary on Magister Adam’s (Adamus Alderspacensis) Summula de summa Raimundi. A hand from the first half or middle of the fifteenth century prepared this copy in a book cursive script. Occasional pen-drawings decorate the text. Based on the binding, the manuscript has been in the Abbey of St. Gall since 1461 at the latest. (len)

Online Since: 04/25/2023

This paper manuscript contains a commentary on Magister Adam’s (Adamus Alderspacensis) Summula de summa Raimundi. According to the colophon on p. 314a, Jodocus Probus completed copying the text on September 12, 1422. The ownership note on p. 3 indicates that the manuscript was in the Abbey of St. Gall by the second half of the fifteenth century at the latest. It is bound with a limp binding. (len)

Online Since: 04/25/2023

This manuscript contains the Pastorale novellum by Rudolf von Liebegg (around 1275-1332), canon and provost of Bischofszell. The widely known canonical-theological didactic poem in 8,723 hexameters is incomplete in this manuscript and has gaps. Two hands shared the copying of the poem. According to the colophon at the end of the work (p. 211), the second scribe, Johannes Mündli, completed his work on May 5, 1354 in Rottweil. Later the manuscript was owned by the Conventual and jurist Johannes Bischoff († 1495) of St. Gall. (len)

Online Since: 10/08/2020

The manuscript transmits Vincentius Hispanus’ apparatus to the Compilatio tertia. Composed in 1210–1215, this apparatus is an extensive, stable series of glosses on a collection of Pope Innocent III’s decretals. This manuscript has the distinction of being a thirteenth-century Italian pecia-exemplar of this gloss-apparatus (without the text of the Compilatio tertia). Pecia-exemplars served as approved sources for the serial copying at universities of legal texts and their apparatus of glosses. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

Completed in 1338, Bartholomew of Pisa’s Summa de casibus conscientiae is one of the most widespread late-medieval confessors’ manuals. Its success is due to its practical orientation and the alphabetical organization of keywords from canon law and moral doctrine. This copy from the second quarter of the fifteenth century likely belonged to the books that the secular priest Matthias Bürer agreed in 1470 to give to the Abbey of St. Gall, and which were transferred after his death in 1485. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

The confessors’ manual of Magister Simon borrows extensively from Raymond of Peñafort’s Summa de poenitentia and Summa de matrimonio. The text contains an indictment that suggests an origin in the Diocese of Paris around 1250 or a little later. According to the ownership note on p. 1, the manuscript, written in two hands in the second half of the thirteenth century or the first half of the fourteenth century, entered the Abbey library of St. Gall by 1478 at the latest. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

The manuscript begins with the important summa of confession by the Dominican Raymond of Peñafort († 1275), the Summa de poenitentia together with its fourth book, finished in 1235 with the title Summa de matrimonio. According to the colophon on p. 246b, Johannes Meyer von Diessenhofen copied the text from 26 August to 8 November 1395. Immediately, or shortly, thereafter, the same hand copied two confessors’ manuals of the Dominican John of Fribourg († 1304) along with a few small additions. The Libellus quaestionum casualium concerns cases that are not treated or only summarily discussed in Raymond of Peñafort’s Summa de poenitentia. The concise Confessionale was tailored to the practical needs of confessors. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

This manuscript from the 2nd half of the 12th century preserves the Abbreviatio Decreti "Quoniam egestas", an abridged version of the Decretum Gratiani, complete with glosses. The text represents the oldest datable record of the study of the Decretum Gratiani in France. The script and book decoration indicate that the manuscript was probably produced in Engelberg during the time of Frowin. Since 1461, it has been at the monastery of St. Gall. (len)

Online Since: 12/20/2012

This extensive manuscript miscellany was written by the secular priest Matthias Bürer. According to the numerous colophons, he finished the copies of the texts in the period from ca. 1448 to 1463 in Kenzingen (Baden-Württemberg) and in many places in Tyrol. The manuscript transmits among other things several theological treatises, a confessors' manual, two mirrors of confession, an ars moriendi (“the art of dying”), the Acts of the Apostles with the Glossa ordinaria, sermons, as well as Books II–IV of Pope Gregory the Great’s Dialogues. After the death of Matthias Bürer in 1485, the manuscript went, along with other books, to the Abbey of St. Gall, in accordance with a 1470 agreement. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

This ecclesiastical law manuscript contains a collection of papal decretals generally known as the Breviarium extravagantium or Compilatio prima, compiled by Bernhard of Pavia, the first decretalist, in about 1189-1190. In addition to older glosses of unspecified origin, on some pages next to the two columns of the Textus inclusus there are extracts taken from the first review of a set of glosses by Tankred of Bologna, which he issued in about 1210-1215. The text, the initials, and the glosses date from the end of the 12th century or possibly the beginning of the 13th century in France. (len)

Online Since: 12/19/2011

The manuscript was written at the turn of the fourteenth to fifteenth century. It transmits a collection of charters and formularies for the ecclesiastical benefice and courts system, secular money transactions and sales, the feudal system, and so on. The notes at the end of the manuscript identify its owner as Johannes Pfister of Gossau († 1433?), imperial notary and cleric of the bishopric of Constance, who was in the service of the city and abbey of St. Gall. The manuscript subsequently belonged to the city clerk of St. Gall Johannes Widembach († c. 1456), who placed his coat of arms on the inside of the back cover. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

This manuscript, probably written in Italy in the second quarter of the 15th century, contains the canonist Wilhelm Horborch’s († 1384) collection of judicial decisions of the Rota Romana. The manuscript probably reached the library of the monastery of St. Gall along with other codices from the estate of St. Gall Abbott Kaspar von Breitenlandenberg (1442–1463), who had studied canon law in Bologna from 1439 until 1442 under Johannes de Anania. (len)

Online Since: 06/25/2015

The eighteenth- or nineteenth-century cardboard binding contains four roughly contemporary manuscript parts from the second half of the fifteenth century. Parts I and III are written in the same hand and transmit instructions and examples for the correct composition of Latin letters and charters and for the use of rhetorical figures. Part II contains a textbook of procedural law by Johannes Urbach; Part IV is a collection of Latin letters composed in the years 1465–1480 and addressed to the Einsiedeln monk and early humanist Albrecht von Bonstetten. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022

The manuscript chiefly transmits a 1481 Landgerichtsordnung (procedural and penal ordinances) for the Abbey-Principality of Kempten, which was possibly copied before the end of the fifteenth century. The manuscript was used by Ulrich Degelin, Chancellor under Abbot Johann Erhard Blarer von Wartensee (1587–1594) and author of a new Landgerichtsordnung for Kempten. Thereafter, the manuscript passed successively into the possession of the Lindau legal scholars Johannes Andreas Heider († 1719) and Johann Reinhard Wegelin († 1764), before Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger acquired it for St. Gall Abbey between 1780 and 1792. (len)

Online Since: 09/22/2022