e-codices Newsletter

Issue n^o 48 - 6 July 2020

In this issue:

1. Fragments from Fulda
2. Completion of a Sub-project: All Fulda-fragments in Switzerland are online
3. Canton Zug and Chicago: another reconstruction

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

The e-codices team

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1. Fragments from Fulda

Since the 1980s, the Institut Bibliotheca Fuldensis of the Faculty of Theology in Fulda has been engaged in research on the important early and high medieval library of Fulda Monastery, which was almost completely destroyed in the Thirty Years' War. However, as early as the first half of the 16th century, several manuscripts from Fulda arrived in Switzerland, most of which were used as text sources for printed editions. After printing these original sources were often treated as manuscript waste. Fortunately, some fragments of these originals have survived and can now help in the reconstruction of the library and scriptorium.

2. Completion of a Sub-project: All Fulda-fragments in Switzerland are online

In collaboration with the Bibliotheca Fuldensis and under the direction of Dr. Johannes Staub, all currently known Fulda-fragments in Switzerland have been digitized and have been provided with scholarly descriptions. Partially unrecognized membra disiecta have been brought together, and the remnants of the important Fulda legendary have been unified virtually. This work has yielded important new insights into the history of the legendary. All documents of the subproject will now be incorporated into the distributed virtual reconstruction of the medieval library (under construction) and into the documentation of the products of the Fulda school of writing and painting.

3. Canton Zug and Chicago: another reconstruction

The successful sub-project "Codices Fuldenses Helvetia" by project director Dr. Johannes Staub concludes with two fragments, one of which was discovered in the Newberry Library in Chicago, the other in the archives of the Waldgenossenschaft (forest cooperative) Steinhausen in the canton of Zug. Each of them is a bifolium from the same quire, containing records from the Council of Ephesus (431); this copy dates to the 2nd third of the 9th century. Later, the codex was apparently used as manuscript waste in Switzerland; it was reused in the 18th century as a cover for the Genossenschaftsprotokolle (proceedings) of the Steinhausen cooperative. Cod. 6 of the virtual collection "codices restituti" contains the reconstruction of the eight surviving pages.