At the beginning of June we added 24 new manuscripts to the site, among them several new highlights. The Bibliothèque de Genève presents a Hebrew codex, containing cabalistic and magical texts, possibly produced in the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. In addition, the Zentralbibliothek Zürich now offers three new 15th century manuscripts online, all three quite impressive, not least because of their rich illustrations. Among these are the Codex Schürstab (Ms. C 54), a medical-astronomical home desk reference, the Aurora consurgens (Ms. Rh. 172), with a collection of alchemical tracts, and an illustration-based manuscript containing a compendium of late medieval war technology. (Ms. Rh. hist. 33b).

All new additions can be accessed with this link:
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/all/LastUpdate/

In May we began work on the latest sub-project, “Frowin’s Library”. Thanks to continued financial support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation we will be able to digitize a total of 40 manuscripts from Kloster Engelberg. These codices were written during the tenure of Abbot Frowin (1143-1178) or of his successors, Abbot Berchtold and Abbot Heinrich, and thus constitute an important resource about the cloister’s early period. The collection is regarded as unique in its presentation and circumscription, and it demonstrates by example the focused way a cloister library was developed during the high middle ages.
(Illustration: Abbot Frowin, Detail)

See below: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek:
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/bke/

Continued generous support from the American Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will enable us to digitize an additional 100 manuscripts from a variety of Swiss manuscript collections. The foundation also supports the conversion process of the e-codices project into a permanent operation.

Project period: July 2011 through December 2012

e-codices engages in interdisciplinary collaborations with medievalists in a variety of different scholarly disciplines. We are currently working with musicologist Stefan Morent (Universität Tübingen) to prepare an audiovisual presentation of the Sequences of Notker Balbulus. The St. Gall monk (ca. 840 – 912) is known as one of the most important religious lyric writers and composers of the middle ages. Prof. Dr. Stefan Morent has reconstructed these sequences using the manuscripts available online via e-codices and performed them with the “Ordo Virtutum” ensemble. The audiovisual presentation will be produced through the collaboration of the Abbey Library of St. Gall, the Eberhard Karls-Universität Tübingen, e-codices, and German broadcaster Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk.

http://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendungen/alte-musik/-/id=1788636/cat=1/pic=3/nid=1788636/did=7140152/pv=gallery/loke47/index.html

DiMusEd: http://www.dimused.uni-tuebingen.de/index.php

The “Chronik” consists of three codices, held by the Aargauer Kantonsbibliothek under the title “Chronicon Helvetiae”. They were produced between 1572 and 1576 by Abbot Christoph Silbereisen of Wettingen, who recorded the history of the community from the perspective of that time. Among the extremely numerous are portrayals of the devastating Basel earthquake (1356) and the Battle of Marignano (1515), not to mention an illustration of the legendary shooting of the apple by William Tell.

During the next few months, e-codices plans to publish online the most important illustrated chronicles of Swiss history, including the famous Schilling Chronicles.