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
Copies of the Ambrosiaster (commentaries by a Pseudo-Ambrosius on the letters of the apostle Paul), produced in the second half of the 9th century at the Abbey of St. Gall.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Lectionary from the Abbey of St. Gall with numerous sermons on various Gospel selections by the church fathers, produced by a number of different hands in the 10th century in St. Gall. This little studied volume also contains benedictions and oratory prayers. Appended at the back (in small script in two columns) is a Psalter. The manuscript has become extremely soiled with intensive use; it features assorted addenda and supplements from the 11th and 12th centuries.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
The incomplete Gelasian Remedius-Sacramentary, composed in Chur in about 800, at the time of the Chur Bishop Remedius, one of the most important liturgical texts from that time, containing the prayers used by bishops or priests during the Mass and administration of the sacraments, at the same time also one of the masterpieces of Retro romansh scribal culture in the Carolingian age, decorated with numerous fantastic initial capitals, still influenced by Irish models. Verifiably present in the monastery of St. Gall by about 850.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
This collection of liturgical manuscripts includes the oldest known example of a Collectarium (containing prayers intended to be sung by a choir on major holy days) and various Statuta liturgica et monastica, written in Alemannic minuscule script during the second half of the 8th century at the Abbey of St. Gall (or certainly in the Lake Constance area).
Online Since: 12/21/2009
This fragment of a Sacramentary of Rhaetian provenance (the Sacramentarium Gelasianum) is important in terms of liturgical scholarship; it was produced near the end of the 8th century in Chur and was recorded shortly thereafter among the holdings of the Abbey of St. Gall. The manuscript is closely related to the Sacramentarium Gelasianum of Codex 348, also of Rhaetian origin.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
A volume of canonical readings for the mass, opulently illuminated for Bishop of Augsburg Marquard von Berg (1575-11591), with a heraldic crest page, a full-page miniature, many scenes along the lower margin representing the important holy days of the church year, and artful flowers and flowerlike ornaments, possibly by Nurnberg book illustrator Sebastian Glockendon the Younger. The manuscript came into the possession of soldiers during the Thirty Years War and was later sold to the St. St. Gall monk and Vicar of Wil, Bernhard Hartmann, who presented it in 1641 to St. Gall Abbot-Bishop Pius Reher (1630-1654).
Online Since: 12/09/2008
Personal reference handbook (vade mecum) of Grimald of St. Gall (Abbot 841-872). This manuscript collection contains items of poetic, liturgical, computational, natural scientific, and historical content, including a calendar, an horology table (orologium), word explanations and definitions from various fields of knowledge, the names of the nymphs and muses, and a provincial directory for the area of St. Gall. About 40 different scribes added texts to this manuscript.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
A Benedictional from the diocese of Mainz, written and decorated with about 200 gold initials and a full-page miniature of Christ as Savior of the World; from about the year 1000, during the tenure of Archbishop Willigis (975-1011). Obtained by the Cloister of St. Gall at an unknown point in time (oldest evidence: in St. Gall by about 1600). It contains the prayers of benediction to be sung by the bishop, ordered according to the church year.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
The summer portion of a Lectionarium officii containing scripture lessons to be sung by a choir, produced during the 10th century at the Abbey of St. Gall.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
An incomplete copy of the Expositio libri comitis, a selection of Epistle and Gospel readings organized according to the Church year composed by the Benedictine monk Smaragdus of St. Mihiel (near Verdun; † ca. 840), produced near the middle of the 9th century at the Abbey of St. Gall.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Lectionary for the period from Christmas through the second Sunday of Lent, with 32 homilies (Predigten) for Sundays and feastdays, written mostly by the church fathers (Ambrosius, Augustine, the Venerable Bede, Fulgentius and Leo the Great, among others), most likely produced at the Abbey of St. Gall in the 10th or early 11th century. The name of one scribe, Egilolfus, added later, can be found on page 85 of the manuscript. The front pages of the manuscript are in exceedingly poor condition, having suffered water damage. The text breaks off on page 177, in the course of a tract by Leo the Great.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
A copy of the Liber scintillarum, a text originally written in about 730 by the monk Defensor of Ligugé (near Poitiers), produced during the 9th century, not at the Abbey of St. Gall. The 81 chapter Liber scintillarum is a florilegium (anthology) of maxims and sayings attributed to God and the saints, derived from the Bible and the writings of the church fathers. The last part of the volume contains fragments of lessons from the monastic liturgy of the hours (lectiones), as well as aphorisms.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
An incomplete copy of the Expositio libri comitis, a selection of Epistle and Gospel readings organized according to the Church year, composed by the Benedictine monk Smaragdus of St. Mihiel (near Verdun; † ca. 840). This copy produced at the women's cloister of Chelles Abbey near Paris was produced in about 810 and is the oldest known surviving copy.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Manuscript compilation consisting mainly of works of liturgical and pastoral character, produced between 845 and 870 in the monastery of St. Gall. It contains, among other items, a liturgical study by Abbot Walahfrid Strabo of Reichenau (808/09-849) Liber de exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum, the first western European reference work on liturgical history, the so called Ordines Romani, a liturgical study by Amalar of Trier, the first Capitular of Bishop Theodulf of Orléans, two treatises about baptism and the mass attributed to Alcuin as well as the Capitular documents (diocesan legislative documents) of Haito, Bishop of Basel and Abbot of Reichenau.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
A composite manuscript consisting mainly of calendars and texts with chronological content, produced in the second half of the 10th century and at the beginning of the 11th century, for the most part not at the abbey of St. Gall. The main items are a calendar, possibly of northern Italian origin, and excerpts from the work De temporum ratione by the Venerable Bede († 735).
Online Since: 12/21/2009
A martyrology by the Venerable Bede († 735) in Anglo-Saxon script, produced in the 9th century. This partial surviving copy (including the beginning of January through July 25th) is distinguished in this collection as a surviving direct copy from the original text composed by Bede. (Note: a martyrology is a collection of longer or shorter life histories of the saints in calendar date order.)
Online Since: 12/09/2008
The sole surviving copy of the Martyrologium by the St. St. Gall monk Notker Balbulus (d. 912), a work written in about 900 and following. This particular copy from the first half of the 10th century is incomplete: a martyrology includes short biographies of the saints according to their given days in the calendar year, but information about saints for dates from June 13-17, July 3-6, August 19-26, October 27 and December 31 is missing. It is very likely that Notker Balbulus never completed the ambitious project of writing the original Martyrologium.
Online Since: 07/31/2009
A martyrology by Hrabanus Maurus, possibly written in Mainz or Fulda, produced shortly after 843. This codex is very likely the presentation copy given to Abbot Grimald of St. Gall (841-872); however, the presentation dedication is missing from the front matter.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
A martyrology by Hrabanus Maurus, composed shortly after 843. The codex contains a copy of Cod. Sang. 457, under the auspices of the St. Gall monk Notker Balbulus shortly after 875. It also includes the presentation dedication, missing from the presentation copy (Cod. Sang. 457), addressed to Abbot Ratleik of Seligenstadt and Abbot Grimald of St. Gall (841-872).
Online Since: 12/09/2008
Computational/scientific compilation manuscript with numerous tables, schematics, and texts about calendar computation, produced in the monastery of St. Gall around the end of the 9th century and beginning ot the 10th. The volume also includes a St. Gallen calendar and the Annales Sangallenses brevissimi (a short history of St. Gall). Two early medieval maps of the world (terrae orbis or T-O maps) precede the work De temporum ratione by the Venerable Bede.
Online Since: 12/09/2008