e-codices newsletter


The e-codices newsletter provides information about the latest updates, highlights, and activities of our project and appears about 4-5 times per year.
We are delighted to count you among our readers!

The e-codices team

 
 
In this issue
  1. 48 New manuscripts online
  2. Since the creation of e-codices, more scholarly manuscript descriptions have been prepared in Switzerland than ever before
  3. New sub-project: Bernese fragments
  4. Special manuscript: Astronomical and geographical work of the Bibliothèque juive « Gérard Nordmann » in Geneva
 
 
June 2018

Issue N° 33
 
 
 
 
 
48 New manuscripts online
 

Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. lat. 60, f. 2r – Decretum Gratiani with glosses by Bartholomaeus Brixiensis
With these 48 new manuscripts, e-codices’ offerings have grown to 2,048 manuscripts from 84 collections. Ten of the 17 new manuscripts from Basel are from the Carthusian Monastery of St. Margarethental. The Burgerbibliothek of Bern has initiated the sub-project “Fragments from the Burgerbibliothek” and publishes another 16 fragments and 2 manuscripts. The remaining documents are from the Bibliothèque cantonale jurassienne (3 manuscripts), the Bibliothèque de Genève (4 manuscripts), the Bibliothèque juive « Gérard Nordmann » (1 manuscript), the Fondation Martin Bodmer (3 manuscripts), the Couvent des Cordeliers Fribourg (1 manuscript) and the St. Gall Abbey Archives (1 manuscript).
 
 
 
Since the creation of e-codices, more scholarly manuscript descriptions have been prepared in Switzerland than ever before
 
The fear that digitization would subvert scholarly manuscript descriptions or render them superfluous has been completely disproven in the case of e-codices. In fact, the opposite is true: Since the creation of e-codices, more scholarly manuscript descriptions have been prepared in Switzerland than ever before. The descriptions of over half (1,059) of the more than 2,000 published manuscripts are from the current century (for comparison, “only” 567 descriptions are from the second half of the 20th century). 443 scholarly descriptions appeared for the first time in e-codices, and most of these were prepared specifically for e-codices. However, catalogues also continue to be published in book form. Since 2005, the Urs Graf publishing company has released a total of 6 volumes (503 descriptions), and other projects by the board of the committee “Katalogisierung der mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Handschriften der Schweiz” are under way. In addition, there are catalogues in Einsiedeln (2009), the Abbey Library of St. Gall (2003, 2008, 2014) Geneva (online catalogue of 2011 and 2016), and the Fondation Martin Bodmer (2016).
descriptions

Facets for descriptions from our Browse & Search page
 
 
 
 
New sub-project: Bernese fragments
 
Together with the Burgerbibliothek Bern, we have facilitated the digitization of approximately 150 fragments of parchment. Most of these are from the collection of Jacques Bongars (1554-1612), who had a philological interest in rare texts, as did Pierre Pithou and especially Pierre Daniel (1530-1603), with whom Bongars was closely associated. Among the texts are, for instance, the oldest Carolingian textual witnesses of Petronius‘ Satyricon; other fragments of this excerpt can be found in Leiden (Voss. Lat. Q 30). Jacques Bongars and Pierre Daniel are among the earliest scholars to have shown an interest in fragments. The Bernese fragment collection is unique because it contains not only manuscript waste, but also a large number of manuscripts that have been transmitted in incomplete form, for example, with only a single quire or a part thereof to have survived. The collection will be published in parallel in e-codices and in Fragmentarium in the coming years.
 
bge/le0206/1r

Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. A 95.2 Parchment · 38 ff. · 14-14.5 x 10-10.5 cm · Northern France or Flanders · beginning of the 14th century (around 1314–1316) Lanfrancus Mediolanensis: Surgery

 
 
 
chap/0066/61r

Genève, La Bibliothèque juive « Gérard Nordmann », HEB 0002, f. 25v – Astronomical and geographical work
 
Special manuscript: Astronomical and geographical work of the Bibliothèque juive « Gérard Nordmann » in Geneva
 
The library “Gérard Nordmann” is a public library in Geneva specializing in Judaica and Hebraica; from its collection of about 30,000 books and other printed documents, we published the Sefer Nehmad ve Naïm, a manuscript containing an astronomical and geographical work by the Bohemian rabbi, astronomer and mathematician R. David ben Salomon Gans (1541-1613). A recent study of the history of the transmission of the work suggests that it is an 18th century copy.
 
 
 
e-codices
Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland
Rue de l’Hôpital 4, CH – 1700 Fribourg

T + 41 (0) 26 300 71 57
F + 41 (0) 26 300 96 27

www.e-codices.ch
e-codices@unifr.ch
 
If you do not wish to receive any further issues of our newsletter, just hit the following e-mail link
Unsubscribe from the e-codices newsletter
and send the e-mail.