Sub-project: The Virtual Abbey Library of Saint Gall
January 2008 - December 2009
Status: Completed
Financed by: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (http://www.mellon.org/)
Description: As of the end of 2009, over 300 manuscripts written before the year 1000 and held by the Abbey Library of St. Gall had been made available on e-codices. The web application had also been further developed using the most up to date informatics tools, allowing users to gain access to the website database faster and more easily. Financial support for this sub-project was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (New York).
All Libraries and Collections
Manuscript compilation from the first quarter of the 9th century, possibly written in Bavaria. The codex contains, among other items, a copy of the Lex Alamannorum (foundation law of the Alamanni), a historically important collection of early accounts of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, including the Itinerarium Burdigalense, which describes a pilgrimage from Bordeaux to Rome in the years 333/34, a treatise on the Assumption of Mary, a table of the Frankish peoples, explications of the Profession of Faith, and the so-called Annales Sancti Galli breves (Brief History of St. Gallen) covering the years 703 through 869.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
Small format manuscript for regular use with a Capitular document collection from the time of Charlemagne. It contains numerous regulations enacted by Charlemagne between 779 and 789, in good, excellent, and sometimes unique surviving versions. It contains, among other items, the Capitularies of Herstal from 779 and the famous Admonitio generalis of Charlemagne from 789. Excellently conserved original Carolingian binding.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
A compendium of 39 medical texts by known and unknown authors, produced in the second half of the 9th century, most likely in northern Italy, already obtained at an early date by the Abbey Library of St. Gall. This codex includes—sometimes in unique exemplars—an alphabetically ordered Greek-Latin herbal glossary, the treatise De re medica by one Pseudo-Plinius (Physica Plinii), and a longer medical tract entitled Liber Esculapii.
Online Since: 12/23/2008
Collection of medical manuscripts from the monastery of St. Gall, written in about 900, with five longer and several shorter medical-pharmaceutical treatises, representing in some cases the best, or even the only surviving copies worldwide. Among these may be found, for example, Pliny the Younger's chapter on medicine, the Medicinae ex oleribus et pomis (Medicines from vegetables and fruits) by the Roman agrarian and medical author Gargilius Martialis (3rd century), and the treatise Oxea et chronia passiones Yppocratis, Gallieni et Urani, which is found in very few manuscript copies. This manuscript also includes (on page 82) a magic sphere for predicting life and death.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
A collection of ten assorted medical tracts, written in the first half of the 9th century in an Insular, likely Celtic, script with continental influences. Among the prescriptions (on page 91) is a blessing with the cross to be used as “Schutzbrief gegen die Versuchungen des Teufels und gegen Fieber” (insurance against temptations by the Devil and against fever). The manuscript also contains, for example, extracts from the Conspectus ad Eustathium filium by Oribasius (4th century AD), a physician of late antiquity, the Epistula de febribus by the Greek physician Galen († 216 AD), and a Liber medicinalis by an unknown author.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
A collection of medical texts in a small-sized manuscript with selections from works by the ancient Greek physicians and authors Hippocrates (about 460-370 BC), Galen (about 129-about 216) and Oribasius (about 320-400), written in Insular (?) minuscule script in about 800, not at the abbey of St. Gall.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
A small-format compendium of ten different medical texts, produced shortly after 800 in an unknown scriptorium, probably in Italy. The contents also include a treatise by the Greek physician Anthimus in the form of a letter to the king of the Franks Theoderich "On the diet" (De observatione ciborum), through which we gain insight to the nutritional habits of one Germanic people.
Online Since: 07/31/2009
A school manuscript from the Abbey of St. Gall containing texts for the subjects of dialectic and rhetoric. The manuscript provides copies of the commentaries of Boethius on the Categories and on the Hermeneutics of Aristotle, a selection of the rhetorical tract by Alcuin († 804) with many schematic diagrams, and copies of Cicero's works De inventione and De optimo genere oratorum. The texts were copied around the end of the 9th century and during the 10th century and contain a multitude of Latin and Old High German glosses as well as numerous glosses in dry point from the 10th through 12th centuries.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Copy of De consolatione philosophiae by Boethius, produced in the 10th century in the monastery of St. Gall, with various Latin and Old High German glosses.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
A copy of a commentary on the first four books of the work De consolatione philosophiae by Boethius († 524), written by many hands in the Abbey of St. Gall near the end of the 10th century or the beginning of the 11th century. The manuscript contains a multitide of Latin and Old High German glosses, of which the Old High German glosses are written in the so-called bfk-Geheimschrift (secret script).
Online Since: 12/21/2009
An incomplete copy of the work De statu animae by the Gallo-Roman presbyter Claudianus Ecdidius Mamertus (d. about 473; brother of the bishop Mamertus of Vienna), written in the 10th century at the Abbey of St. Gall. In the last quarter of this copy the last line on each page is missing; the missing parts of these pages were replaced with blank parchment by the restorer in 1969.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Part I of the commentary of the late Roman grammarian Servius (ca. 400) on Virgil's Aeneid (Books 6 through 8 [v. 685]), produced at the Abbey of St. Gall in about 900. Part II of this widely disseminated commentary is found in Cod. Sang. 862.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
Part 2 of the commentary by the late Roman grammarian Servius (ca. 400) on the works of Virgil, including books 9 through 12 as well as a biography of Publius Vergilius Maro, produced in about 900 in the Abbey of St. Gall. Part 1 of this widely disseminated commentary on Virgil is found in Cod. Sang. 861.
Online Since: 07/31/2009
A highly important poetry manuscript containing the works of the Reichenau scholar and Abbot Walahfrid Strabo (809/10-849). In addition to a wealth of short poems of both a spiritual and a worldly nature, the volume also includes verse legends about both the Cappadocian martyr Mammes (De vita et fine Mammae monachi) and the Irish Abbot Blathmac (Versus Strabi de beati Blaithmaic vita et fine), the Dream-vision of Reichenau monk Wetti (Visio Wettini) and the poem De imagine Tetrici, a discussion of the now lost statue of Theoderich the Great on horseback, which Charlemagne had moved from Ravenna to his palace in Aachen. The manuscript was produced in the Abbey of St. Gall during the second half of the 9th century.
Online Since: 12/23/2008
Commentary notes (most of them explanations written for use in teaching) about the 16 Satires of the Roman poet Juvenal (about 60-140), preceded by 460 verses in hexameter (most of them from the Satires) and a mixed glossary from the Satires of Juvenal. The St. Gall copy was made in the second half of the 9th century.
Online Since: 12/23/2008
Manuscript compilation consisting mainly of grammatical texts, written in a variety of hands in about 800 in the monastery of St. Gall. Some of the texts in this codex are the oldest extant versions, and the text of the anonymous treatise De scansione heroyci versus et specie eorum is the only known surviving version in the world. Grammars include the Ars major and Ars minor by Donatus, a complilation of the two Donatus grammars by Peter of Pisa, the work De metris des Mallius Theodorus, the Ars grammatica by Diomedes, and both De arte metrica and De schematibus et tropis by the Venerable Bede.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
Excerpts from the works of Isidore of Seville, from the Etymologiae and the work De officiis, written in about 900, not at the Abbey of St. Gall, possibly in France. At the end is a scribe's verse in which the scribe calls himself Aurelianus.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Manuscript compilation with mostly grammatical content, produced during the second half of the 9th century in the Abbey of St. Gall. It contains, among other items, copies of the Ars maior by Donatus, the Ars grammatica by Honoratus, the work Ars de verbo by Eutyches, the Ars grammatica by Diomedes, and Book I of the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville.
Online Since: 12/23/2008
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