Sub-project: Switzerland’s illuminated treasures
March 2020 - November 2020
Status: Completed
Description: The exhibitions celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the e-codices project, the Swiss platform for the digitisation of manuscripts. In this connection, both collections are showing highlights from their own holdings as well as a large number of valuable loans from other libraries participating in the e-codices programme.
All Libraries and Collections
This sumptuous manuscript contains the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea translated by St. Jerome and presented in columns, together with continuations by Jerome and Prosper of Aquitaine. It was produced in about 1480 in Padua or Venice and was illuminated by Petrus V…, who created a masterful full-page illustration on Fol. 10r. A binding error unfortunately reduces the overall esthetic appeal of the volume: the first and second fascicles have been placed in inverse order.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This manuscript dates from about 1420 and contains the "Conspiracy of Catilin " and the "Jugurthine War" by Sallust. Miniature illuminations in grisaille were added by Bedford-Meister and assistants in his workshop, followed by a commentary by Jean Lebègues, who wrote a guide to the illustration of historical scenes in the above-named works of Sallust in 1417. During the 17th century the manuscript was owned by the Petau family. In 1720 Ami Lullin of Geneva purchased the codex and donated it to the Bibliothèque de Genève.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
This portolan by Andrea Benincasa is signed and dated 1476 on the last chart, which is glued to the inside back cover. The five nautical charts, each occupying a double page of the atlas, describe the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea (chart 1), the coasts between Sicily and the Aegean Sea (chart 2), the Mediterranean Sea from Gibraltar to Rome with Corsica and Sardinia (chart 3), the coasts of the Atlantic between England and Ireland to the Strait of Gibraltar (chart 4), and finally the coasts between Gibraltar and Cape Bojador, including the Canary Islands and other islands (chart 5). The star-shaped rhumb lines with wind roses indicate the compass directions, while the scales, here marked in the corners of the leaves, make it possible to estimate distances. The precise course of the coasts highlighted with color and the elegant script of the toponyms are characteristic of maps from the Benincasa studio, which were intended as objects for book lovers, but not for navigation. Among the numerous inscriptions on these maps, those on the Atlantic islands are the most surprising, as they seem to anticipate the discovery of the American archipelago like “Antilia,” or the island of “Brazil”; these names were adopted by Christopher Columbus and his successors to name certain territories in the New World.
Online Since: 12/12/2019
One of the ancient authors best known in the Middle Ages doubtlessly was Cicero. Some of his speeches - the Orationes - were rediscovered by humanists, as is attested by this copy. The manuscript contains 27 of Cicero’s speeches, written in a round Italian humanistic script. It begins with a miniature depicting a group of speakers in a discussion (f. 1r), painted by Péronet Lamy, an illuminator who is documented from 1432 until 1453 and who worked primarily for Amadeus VIII, the Duke of Savoy. It is likely that Péronet Lamy carried out this decoration when he was at the Council of Basel as part of the Duke’s entourage. Also present there was Martin le Franc (1408-1461), ducal secretary and author of the Champion des Dames and the Estrif de fortune et de vertu; according to a scraped entry (f. 290r), he came into possession of this manuscript. Thereafter it belonged to Germain Colladon (back pastedown), a fellow student of John Calvin, who fled to Geneva in 1550. Around 1615, one of his daughters-in-law sold the manuscript, together with Ms. lat. 53, to the Bibliothèque de Genève.
Online Since: 03/22/2018
Composite manuscript with the following content: 1. collection of autographs by the Florentine poet Gabriele Simeoni (Florence, 1509 - Lyon, 1577?), dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, with poems in Italian and Latin and illustrated by the author; 2. collection of poems, partly autographs, by Giovan Battista Strozzi (1489-1538), containing his madrigals as well as some compositions by Leonardo Giustiniani (1388-1446) and by Anton Francesco Grazzini (1505-1584).
Online Since: 12/12/2019
15th century parchment missal, made for Bishop Johann von Venningen (1458-1478). The expenditure records of Bishop Johann von Venningen permit tracing the individual stages of the making of this missal. This manuscript was created at the same time as ms. 2 and ms. 3. In 1462/1463, the final touches were added to the almost completed manuscript, the illumination, the initials, the fleuronné initials, and especially the attachment of the cover. For convenience, the order of the Ordo and the Canon was changed. Originally meant to be at the beginning of the manuscript, they were finally placed in the middle.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
This manuscript contains a Latin version of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, translated and glossed by Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln. The decoration of monochrome as well as red and blue fleuronné initials at the beginning of the chapters (e.g., 3r) and the colorfully decorated initials at the beginning of the books (e.g., 1r) attest to an origin in Southwestern Germany in the third quarter of the 15th century. The manuscript was originally part of the episcopal library; during the French Revolution it came to the library of the Jesuit College of Porrentruy; in the 20th century it finally became part of the collection of the Library of the Canton of Jura.
Online Since: 09/23/2014
Part of a four-volume Latin Bible in parchment, produced in the scriptorium of Allerheiligen monastery in Schaffhausen shortly after 1080. The codex has numerous initials with scroll ornaments, a page decorated with colours and gold featuring an initial V (the vision of Isaiah), and a historiated inital with scroll ornaments (the calling of Jeremiah), in which the influence of manuscripts from Reichenau can be recognized. Along with Min. 18, Min. 4 is one of the most important codices from the prime of Allerheiligen, when the monastery, founded in 1049, supported, under Abbot Siegfried (d. 1096), the reforms of Hirsau and, for this purpose established a library.
Online Since: 10/04/2011
The 13th-century manuscript is composed of three parts. The first part contains Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian works in Latin translation. The second part contains 'De mineralibus' and 'De natura loci' by Albertus Magnus. The third part consists of a commentary by Michael Scotus on Johannes de Sacrobosco's work about the heavenly spheres, an anonymous commentary on the Arithmetic of Boethius, and the commentary by Averroës on Aristotle's 'De longitudine et brevitate vitae'. This manuscript is among the finest examples of Italian secular book production from the last third of the 13th century, and it is one of the earlier illuminated Aristotelian manuscripts.
Online Since: 03/24/2006
This manuscript of Six âges du monde, created in France at the end of the 14th century or at the very beginning of the 15th century, appears towards the end of the Middle Ages in the library of the Supersaxo family, one of the most important libraries of Valais, which today is held in the Médiathèque Valais-Sion and (this manuscript) in the State Archives of Valais in Sion. The work is remarkable in more ways than one: first, it was created in the rarely-used scroll format, a format reserved for, among others, universal chronicles, a genre to which this manuscript belongs. Second, a complex family tree, showing the descendants of Adam until the birth of Christ, runs the entire length (eight meters) of the manuscript. The columns of text of this impressive graphic document are accompanied by numerous drawings that resemble the style of Parisian works. Finally, this exemplar is not unique, since the municipal library of Reims owns a similar scroll (ms. 61), which certainly was illustrated by the same master.
Online Since: 03/22/2017
This Missale Speciale Sedunense was written for the Sion bishop William of Raron (Guillermus de Rarognia) († 1451) in 1439 by Johannes Thieboudi. The parchment codex contains, in addition to a calendar, the Proprium de tempore, the Ordo et canon missae, the Commune sanctorum, the Proprium de sanctis (from Hilarius to Thomas the Apostle) and the Missae pro defunctis. An appendix includes three votive masses.
Online Since: 12/21/2010
In the works De arithmetica and De institutione musica Boethius transmitted Greek mathematics and music theory to medieval readers. The polychrome schematic illustrations in this 12th century manuscript are particularly carefully made.
Online Since: 05/20/2009
The cosmology of the Lyon physician and astrologer Louis de Lange treats the formation of the world and describes the earth and the stars in the sky. The illustrations of the decans, showing the subdivision of each of the twelve signs of the zodiac into three astrological sections, are worthy of particular attention. Despite the attractive illustration, the work was not very popular; only a few manuscripts are known to exist.
Online Since: 05/20/2009
The Folchart Psalter, a masterpiece of late Carolingian illumination.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
The Gundis Gospel-Book, one of the most splendid liturgical manuscripts of the monastery of St. Gall, containing a monumental "Maria" monogram.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
A compilation from the 11th century containing a version of Prudentius' Psychomachia, illustrated with pen drawings.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
Manuscript compilation from the late 8th and early 9th centuries, opening with the oldest extant St. Gall copy of the Regula Pastoralis of Gregory the Great from the last third of the 8th century, followed by a medical-pharmaceutical compendium. The latter, parts of it badly bound, consists of the folded reference manual of a wandering physician from northern Italy, the so-called St. Gall Botanicus, and the St. Gall Bestiary.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
Manuscript collection by Winithar with illustrations (the oldest from St. Gall) of Isidore of Seville's De natura rerum.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
Collection of Astronomical-computistical tables and charts with high-quality pen drawings of the constellations.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
Superbly crafted St. Gall sacramentary from the time of Abbot Norbert of Stablo (1034-1072) for the celebration of the Mass, containing a calendar of saints, a list of incipits of the spoken and chanted texts for the Mass on the principal feast days of saints and the sacramentary itself, which is illustrated with four splendid full-page miniatures, two full-page initials and numerous smaller initials.
Online Since: 06/12/2006