Sub-project: Greek Sources in Swiss Libraries
January 2010 - August 2010
Status: Completed
Financed by: Stavros Niarchos Foundation (www.snf.org)
Description: The project “Greek Sources in Swiss Libraries” included digitizing 40 manuscripts and the additional work necessary to publish the manuscripts on the e-codices Web site. The selection includes manuscripts from various Swiss libraries, including the Abbey Library of Saint Gall, the Abbey Library of Einsiedeln, the Library of Geneva, the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny (Geneva) and the Burgerbibliothek Bern. The project focuses on three types of materials: manuscripts containing texts from Greek antiquity in the Greek language, manuscripts containing medieval and early modern translations of Greek classics, and manuscripts containing medieval commentaries on key works of Greek antiquity.
All Libraries and Collections
This codex contains In Isagogen Porphyrii Commentorum Editio secunda (ed. Brandt 1906). The codex was written by numerous hands, including those of both Cologne and Einsiedeln origins; the nature of the collaboration has not been determined. The same text is found in Cod. 338(1321) I.
Online Since: 08/12/2010
This is a composite manuscript containing works with philosophical and rhetorical content. At the beginning are translations by Boethius of Aristotle's Categories and the Peri Hermeneias; these are followed by a piece called De Dialectica and Cicero's Topica with In Topica Ciceronis, the commentary by Boethius.
Online Since: 08/12/2010
This is actually a manuscript of collected texts, since, in addition to the incomplete Imago mundi by Honorius Augustodunensis, it also contains other texts by unnamed authors such as: Nomina XI regionum, Divisio orbis terrarum, De anima, De anima humana, De origine animarum, De anima mundi, De origine animarum and ends with the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem.
Online Since: 08/12/2010
This manuscript was produced in a Parisian workshop around the end of the 13th century. It contains the Latin version of thirteen critiques written by, or generally thought to have been written by, Aristotle. The book ends with a fragment of De uno deo benedicto by Moses Maimonides. Forty decorated initials adorn the text, and a large drawing of Christ on the cross with Mary and John has been added on the last folio.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This manuscript, copied in the years 1460-1480, contains De regimine principum by Aegidius Romanus, decorated with a miniature in which the author (Aegidius Romanus) dedicates the book to the king of France. The last leaves contain the Life of Aesop and his Fables, translated into Latin by Rinuccio di Arezzo. The manuscript was owned by François Bonivard († 1570), who was prior of the Cluniac Priory of St. Victor in Geneva.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This manuscript from the 16th century contains the Latin translation of the tract entitled De tranquilitate animi by Plutarch, made by the French humanist Guillaume Budé in 1505. It is preceded by a letter from Budé to Pope Julius II, to whom the translation is addressed. The manuscript does not include illustrations, though the 16th century binding contains two scenes depicting the Virgin Mary: the Assumption of Mary and the Blessing of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Trinity.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This volume, which was produced in Italy in the mid to late 15th century, is a collection of letters, bringing together letters by Phalaris, Diogenes of Sinope and Brutus, who were regarded in the middle ages as the true authors of these letters. They were translated into Latin by Francesco Griffolini Aretino and Ranuccio of Arezzo. A decorative illustration in bianchi girari (entwined white vine style) is found at the beginning of the section by each author. Two fragments of De officiis ministrorum by St. Ambrose are found at the end of the volume.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
A copy of Aristotle's Categoriae (Categories) and De interpretatione (On interpretation) in Latin, followed by the respective commentaries of Boethius on each of the Aristotelian texts. Between texts and commentaries is the poem De ponderibus et mensuris by Remmius Favinus (?) concerning weights and measures. This manuscript, decorated with three unusual initials (pp. 44, 203 and 221) was written during the 11th century, likely only parts of it in St. Gall.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This undecorated manuscript for practical use, containing the commentary of Boethius on Aristotle's Categories (Categoriae), was written at the Abbey of St. Gall during the 11th century. On the last three pages is the beginning of Ovid's De arte amandi.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
A composite manuscript intended for teaching purposes, written in Mainz during the first half of the 11th century, possibly brought to St. Gall by the monk Ekkehart IV. Ekkehart IV. taught intermittently at the cathedral school in Mainz and added a great many glosses to this manuscript. The codex gathers together a number of texts used in school teaching, for example copies of the commentary of Boethius on Aristotle's De interpretatione, Cicero's Topica, the Geometry I by (pseudo?)-Boethius as well as additional works by Boethius, such as De differentiis topicis, De divisione, De syllogismis categoricis and De syllogismis hypotheticis. At the end of the volume are two brief texts by Ekkehart IV. about the Septem Artes Liberales, (on page 488) verses in praise of Boethius and (on page 490) an allegory based on the Septem Artes Liberales in the form of instructions to a goldsmith.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
A composite manuscript from the 11th century, possibly written at the Abbey of St. Gall. The main content of the codex consists of commentaries by Boethius on Cicero's Topica and on the Isagoge by the neoplatonic philosopher Porphyrius († after 300), Porphyrius's Isagoge itself and assorted other texts. Among these are, for example, small pieces by Walahfried Strabo (Regulae metricae; a letter with the incipit Domino meo benedictus salus et vita) and by Marius Victorinus, a 4th century Roman scholar (De generatione divina).
Online Since: 04/15/2010
A copy for practical use transmitting numerous anonymous commentaries on the Isagoge of Porphyrius († after 300) as well as various philosophical works by Aristotle and Boethius, almost certainly written during the 12th century.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
A painstakingly annoted copy of the work De natura animalium tractatus XIX by Aristotle, in the Latin version by the scholar Michael Scotus († ca. 1235), written during the 13th century, with an opening "I" initial, partly decorated in gold, showing a man sitting before a book. In 1453 this manuscript was owned by one Johannes Kalf from Wangen (in Allgäu); bound in a Kopert (limp vellum) binding.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
A 13th/14th century philosophical manuscript containing Latin versions of the Liber de definitionibus by Isaac ben Salomon Israeli († ca. 932), a Jew who lived in Egypt and Tunisia, together with the work De quinque essentiis by the Arab philosopher and mathematician Al-Kindi (Latinized as Alkindus; † 873), the Liber de causis, erroneously attributed to Aristotle, as well as the beginning of the work De differentia spiritus et animae by the Arab philosopher Qusta ibn Luqa (Latinized as Costa ben Luca; 820-912). The codex is bound in an extremely damaged Kopert (limp vellum) binding.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
A copy of the commentary on Aristotle by the French scientist and philosopher Nicolas Oresme († 1382) Quaestiones super libros Meteororum; according to the colophon (on f. 175v) this copy was completed in September 1459.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
A study notebook used by the St. Gall monk Mauritius Enk († 1575) containing notes on lectures given by the Jesuit Jacobus Valentinus (also known as Jacobus de Borrasa; † 1581) on Aristotle's De physica, De caelo et mundo, Tractatus de elementis, De ortu et interitu and De anima, written in 1568/69 while Enk was a student at the Jesuit-run Collège de Clermont in Paris.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
Transcriptions, prepared by Mauritius Enk (1538-1575) of the Abbey of St. Gall and an unknown fellow student, of lectures presented by the Spanish Jesuit Johannes Maldonatus (Juan Maldonado, professor of philosophy from 1564 to 1565 and of theology from 1565 to 1569 at the College de Clermont) and Jacobus Valentinus (Jacques Valentin, professor of theology at the College de Clermont from 1565 to 1569). In addition to an introduction to theology, the lecture notes include a commentary on Aristotle by Jacques Valentin (Annotationes in libros Ethicorum) and other material. The volume has a Parisian calfskin binding bearing an owner's mark embossed in gold.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
Lecture notes by Mauritius Enk (1538-1575) of the abbey of St. Gall from lectures by the Spanish Jesuit Jacobus Valentinus (professor of theology at the Collège de Clermont 1565-1569) on Aristotle's Ethics.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
Transcription made by Joachim Opser († 1594, St. Galler monastic community member, Abbot beginning in 1577) of lectures presented by the Spanish Jesuit Jacobus Valentinus (professor of theology at the College de Clermont 1565-1569) on the writings of Aristotle gathered together as the Organon.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
Lecture note transcriptions made, not as earlier thought, by Joachim Opser, but rather by St. Gall monastic community member Mauritius Enk (1538-1575) and by unknown fellow students. In addition to commentaries on Aristotle by the Spanish Jesuit Johannes Maldonatus (Juan Maldonado, professor of philosophy 1564-1565 and of philosophy 1565-1569 at the College de Clermont) and Jacobus Valentinus (Jaques Valentin, professor of theology at the College de Clermont 1565-1569) as well as additional lectures by the Scottish Jesuit Jacobus Tyrius (professor of theology and philosophy at the College of Clermont) and other texts about arithmetic and geometry, some of them anonymous.
Online Since: 04/15/2010