Sub-project: Pilot Project: Digital Abbey Library of St. Gall
January 2005 – December 2006
Status: Completed
Financed by: the Paul Schiller Foundation, the UBS Cultural Foundation, the Ernst Göhner Foundation, the Otto Gamma Foundation, the Jubilee Foundation of Swiss Mobiliar Insurance, the Research Funding Foundation of the University of Fribourg, the Jubilee Foundation of the Zurich Insurance Group, and the Friends of the Abbey Library of St. Gall
Description: In the pilot project a selection of medieval manuscripts from the Abbey Library of St. Gall was digitized. This start-up project was made possible by different financial supporters.
All Libraries and Collections
Hegesippus/Flavius Josephus, Jewish War. Copy from the 9th century.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
German translation of a history of the First Crusade (1095/96-1099; Historia Hierosolymitana), composed by the monk Robertus Monachus from Reims. Written and illustrated with 22 colored pen drawings in the year 1465. As an appendix, the manuscript also contains around 9000 verses from the Österreichische Reimchronik (rhymed chronicle of Austria) by Ottokar of Steiermark describing the siege and destruction of the Crusaders' fortress in Akkon in the year 1291.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
Collection of council decisions and papal decrees up to the 8th century, an important St. Gallen copy from the 9th century.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
Important early textual witness of the Decretum Gratiani, probably even the earliest known version. As opposed to the later widespread version of 101 Distinctiones (Part I), 36 Causae (Part II) and De consecratione (Part III) with ca. 4000 Canones in all, the Decretum in this manuscript consists of only 33 Causae with ca. 1000 Canones. The numbering, however, was soon adapted to the later commonly used division into 36 Causae and preceding distinctions. This version includes some sections of text not found in later versions. The Decretum is followed by an extremely heterogeneous collection of excerpts.
Online Since: 12/12/2006
An important legal manuscript from Raetia: the Lex Romana Curiensis with the Capitula of Bishop Remedius of Chur which are only preserved here, dating from around 800.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
The earliest manuscript catalogue of the monastery of St. Gall from the middle of the 9th century, followed by a collection of important law texts (capitularies of Ansegis, Lex Salica, Lex Ribuaria).
Online Since: 12/31/2005
The so-called Wandalgarius manuscript containing the Lex Romana Visigothorum, the Lex Salica and the Lex Alamannorum. An important legal manuscript, written and decorated with numerous colored initials and a miniature of a crowned lawgiver in the year 793 by the cleric Wandalgarius in Lyon. It contains the laws of the Visigoths (Lex Romana Visigothorum), the Salian Franks (Lex Salica) and the Alemanni (Lex Alamannorum). It is the oldest precisely dated manuscript in the Abbey Library of St. Gall.
Online Since: 12/12/2006
School manuscript from the monastery of St. Gall, containing Cassiodorus'Institutiones saecularium litterarum (an educational book on the "Septem Artes Liberales").
Online Since: 12/31/2005
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (Lucan, 39-65 AD), "De bello civili" (also known as the "Pharsalia"). Epic poem on the civil war between Pompey and Caesar (48 - 45 BC).
Online Since: 06/12/2006
Manuscript compilation from the St. Gallen scriptorum, dating from around 800 and containing numerous grammatical treatises.
Online Since: 12/31/2005
The Vademecum (personal handbook) of Walahfrid Strabo (ca. 808-849), Abbot of Reichenau. It is one of the few known autographs of a prominent figure to survive from the early Middle Ages. It contains diverse texts and images by numerous hands, written between ca. 825 and 849, among them a labyrinth (on page 277) and different alphabets (pages 320/321), one in runes.
Online Since: 12/12/2006
School manuscript for the St. Gall monastery school, containing the Greek grammar by Dositheus and a prose version of Aratos of Soloi's didactic poem Phainomena which is illustrated with a pen drawing.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
Manuscript compilation for the monastery school of St. Gall, written by the monk Winithar.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
"The king of palimpsests": parchment fragments from late antiquity that were erased and reused at a later time, sometimes more than once. The scholarly significance of the palimpsests normally lies in the older texts. Some works have only been preserved as palimpsests. This volume, compiled by the librarian Ildefonse of Arx before and after 1800 from single fragments found in the abbey library, contains among many other texts the oldest known copy of the Mulomedicina of Vegetius (5th century), the only known poems and prose by Flavius Merobaudes (5th century) and the so-called "St. Gallen oracles", or "Sortes Sangallenses" (6th century).
Online Since: 12/12/2006
The most historically significant exemplar of the Benedictine Rule from the time after 810.
Online Since: 09/14/2005
The oldest capitulary from the monastery of St. Gall, containing, among other items, a martyrology, a necrology, the annals of St. Gall and several rules for monks.
Online Since: 12/31/2005