While both parts of this manuscript are more than a thousand years old, they were probably first bound together in the fifteenth century. They come from the monastery of Murbach and could have entered the Basel Franciscan convent with Conrad Pellikan. Like the few other surviving volumes from this convent, this collection of writings by the Church Father St. Augustine is not a typical Franciscan manuscript. Part one contains a copy of the catalogue-like De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum, written around 429 and introduced by letters on the history of its composition, as well as a Regula ancillarum (Letter 211). Part two is one of the oldest witnesses of the 395 treatise on free choice (De libero arbitrio), although limited to book 1: Unde malum. (mag)

Online Since: 08/21/2025

This medieval Hebrew lexicographical and scientific miscellany dates back to 1290 and encloses three highly important texts, used as the base for published editions and studies. These are: the Maḥberet Menahem by Menahem ben Jacob Ibn Saruq (died c. 970); an anonymous Hebrew prose translation of the very popular Old French version of the lapidary by Marbode of Rennes (12th c.) and lastly, an anonymous abridged version of the talmudic and midrashic lexicon entitled Sefer ha-Arukh by Natan ben Yehiel Anav of Rome (1035-1110), called the Berner Kleiner Arukh. The particularity of this copy is the presence of Old West Yiddish and Old French glosses. Furthermore, among the numerous later notes, there are more significant additions which abound in the blank pages and margins of the manuscript, the most unusual of which is a charm in Middle High German in Hebrew characters, relative to Hulda, a German goddess comparable to Venus, taken from the Tannhäuserlied. Moreover, this manuscript belonged to several famous Jewish and Christians owners, whose scriptural witness testifies to the manuscript's remarkable stature as a treasured source of knowledge from the time it was compiled at the end of the 13th century, to its possession by Christian Hebraists in Switzerland during the 16th and 17th centuries. (iss)

Online Since: 12/12/2019