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Henry Suso’s Buchlein der ewigen Weisheit is a fourrteenth-century devotional and meditational work, written in High Alemannic dialect. Meliora Muheim (d. 1630), later Prioress of the convent of Hermetschwil, acquired the parchment manuscript from a Zürich bookbinder in 1598 (Ir).
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This small manuscript, written in Latin, comes from the fourteenth century. It contains chiefly a Compendium theologiae moralis, which comprises 224 chapters on the foundational concepts of the doctrine of the faith and on leading a Christian life. The origin of the manuscript is unknown.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This parchment manuscript was written in Latin in the second half of the thirteenth century. Cistercian in origin, it belonged to the Cistercian Abbey of Wettingen since the beginning of the eighteenth century. The manuscript shows contemporary corrections as well as additions from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
The scribe Johannes produced this parchment and paper manuscript in the second half of the fifteenth century in High Alemannic dialect. The ownership mark has been erased; there is no evidence for the hypothesis of Albert Bruckner that the manuscript belonged to a convent of women.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
The production of this liturgical manuscript on parchment dates to different centuries. The first part was written in the last third of the thirteenth century, while the second part contains additions dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The Latin codex belonged to the Cistercian abbey of Chaalis in Northern France. In the seventeenth century, the manuscript entered the possession of the Cistercian Abbey of Wettingen.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This Lectionarium officii is a parchment manuscript written in Latin after the mid-thirteenth century. Its origin is unknown, but in the seventeenth century the codex entered the possession of the Cistercian abbey of Wettingen.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
Written in Latin at the beginning of the fourteenth century, this parchment manuscript contains the Compendium theologicae veritatis by Hugh of Strasbourg (1210-1270) as well as the Quaestiones super quatuor libros Sententiarum of William de Rothwell, OP (ca. 1260). Probably at Wettingen in the fifteenth century, in the eighteenth century the manuscript was owned by the Cistercian Order in Wettingen.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
The manuscript, which contains among other things a Plenarium in German as well as the treatise “Gegen den Eigenbesitz im Kloster” by Henry of Langenstein, was probably bound towards the end of the fifteenth century at the Basel Charterhouse and kept in the lay brothers’ library. All parts of the manuscript were written in the Alemannic linguistic area; part 2 was probably copied in Alsace. The manuscript contains annotations of the charterhouse’s barber-surgeon, a lay brother named Melcher, who wrote down, among other things, notes on a planned but never executed cycle of paintings of the Apostles.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This medical miscellany contains among other things a copy of the Antidotarium Magnum, an extensive compendium of medical recipes that was produced in Monte Cassino at the initative of Constantine the African. This copy has particularly unusual decoration, with 22 large-format, ornamented and historiated initials.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This manuscript contains Ps.-Boethius, De disciplina scolarium and John of Garland, De compositis verbis, both with commentaries and additions. Both were written in the second half of the fifteenth century, and one part is dated to 1498. The book was used by many owners, who contributed many annotations and corrections, including also simply pen-drawings, verse exercises, and the names of students. In the early sixteenth century the volume belonged to the library of the Basel Charterhouse, whence it came to the University Library of Basel after the Reformation.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This miscellany with saints’ lives, sermons, and a small collection of Marian miracles was produced at the end of the fourteenth century in the eastern-Alemannic linguistic area. Most of the legends come from the German-language version that has been ascribed to the Zürich Dominican Marquard Biberli (ca. 1265 - ca. 1330), and which is otherwise only transmitted by the manuscript S 451 of Solothurn. In the fifteenth century at the latest, the volume was bound from two originally independent units, each of which was produced by a single, different, scribe. The medieval provenance of the volume is unknown; in the eighteenth century, it belonged to the “Bibliotheca Bruckeriana” (probably Johann Heinrich Brucker, 1725-1754) and was purchased by the University Library in 1808.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
In this act, Charles IV (1314-1378, crowned emperor in 1355) authorizes Countess Irmengard of Nassau († 1371) to collect tolls in her villages, courts, and towns, as did her father, Kraft II von Hohenlohe-Weikersheim († 1344), before her. The revenues are intended to repay the Empire’s debts owed her. Attached to the document by a parchment strip, the fragmentary wax seal is that of King Charles IV. After passing several centuries in the Hohenlohe family, the document was sold by the auction house of J. A. Stargardt in Marburg to Martin Bodmer in 1969.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
Containing more than 9,000 verses, this text comes from the first section of Jāmi’s Divān, entitled Fātihat al-shabāb (“The Dawn of Youth”). In spite of its title, this manuscript presents lyric poetry that Jāmi (1414-1494) composed from the beginning of his career until around when he was 65, namely over a period of about thirty years. In addition to mystic and religious poetry, it contains several panegyrics addressed to various lords in which the poet expresses his gratitude or celebrates their accomplishments. The paintings have a direct connection to the text.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This Franciscan Gradual comes from southwestern Germany and the first half of the fourteenth century. It contains rich decoration with a style of initials typical of the Upper Rhine: large initials filled with pen-flourished initials and medallions with fantastic animals. The eighteenth-century binding has wooden boards covered in dark-brown leather.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This composite manuscript contains study materials, for the most part written by Jean Joly (the guardian of the Fribourg Franciscan Convent, 1467-1469, 1472-1478, 1481-1510) during his studies in Avignon. In addition to numerous study-texts by Jean Joly, it contains the writings of the Franciscans Johannes de Fontanellis and Matthew of Acquasparta. The wooden-board binding covered in brown leather comes from the Rolet Stoss’s workshop in the Franciscan Convent of Fribourg, restored in 2020.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
Miscellany volume assembled and supplied with catchwords by Friedrich von Amberg (Guardian of the Fribourg Franciscan Convent, † 1432) from different parts that were produced independently. The volume, divided into ten parts, contains in addition to preaching materials excerpts from William Peraldus’s Summa de vitiis (Part 4), Ludolph of Saxony’s Rationes XIV ad proficiendum in virtute (Part 5), Francis of Meyronnes’s Moralia (Part 7), and Engelbert of Cologne’s Sermones de sanctis (Part 10). The parchment pastedowns and flyleaves are from a fifteenth-century testament, probably to the benefit of the Franciscans. Several parchment quire guards in present, among which appear fragments of a thirteenth/fourteenth century commented manuscript, a fourteenth-century grammatical treatise, and a charter from the fourteenth century. The manuscript has a chained binding, covered in heavily worn leather, and restored in 2021.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This slim manuscript, in a cardboard binding bound in leatherette, contains a text by Father Moreau, De religione rauracorum, as the label on the spine indicates. Marcel Moreau (1735-1804), trained at the Jesuit college of Porrentruy, then entered the Cistercian abbey of Lucelle, wrote several texts on the history of his region, notably a series of six dissertations on Rauracia (A141). Manuscript A46 uses this same literary form to discuss the topic of religion. The main text, written in Latin with some French passages, takes up the left side of each page and is completed on the right side with various notes or bibliographical references. This manuscript is a working copy that the author clearly corrected, deleting words or entire parts, but also by making numerous insertions.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
Dating from the end of the eighteenth century, this paper manuscript contains a collection of customs observed in the bishopric of Basel. It is composed of topical entries, like commune, discussion volontaire, Grandval, obligations, etc., often organized according to alphabetical order (from Absent, p. 1, to Veuve, p. 255). In the left side margin, the term relative to each custom is illustrated with excerpts from judicial acts, dated for the most part.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
The Latin manuscript contains an abridged version of the history of the bishopric of Basel during the episcopate of Jean-Henri d’Ostein (1628-1646), during the Thirty Years’ War. The text copied is identical to manuscript A1399a. Before entering the collection of the library of the Collège de Porrentruy (stamp on the parchment binding and on one of the flyleaves [V3]), this copy belonged to the chaplain Fidèle Ignace Chariatte (1730-1808): “Ex libris F. I. Charrialte sacellani M.G.V. 1766” (upper pastedown), and then to Henri-Joseph Crelier (1816-1889) “Ex libris Henrici Grelier 1841” (V1). The latter, after training in theology with the Jesuits, was a teacher at the Collège de Porrentruy, then almoner in Besançon, and finally priest at Rebeuvelier, before being dismissed in 1871.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
This Latin manuscript contains an abridgement of the history of the episcopate of Basel at the time of Bishop Jean-Henry d’Ostein (1579-1646), identical to that found in manuscript A1399. This copy served for the French edition of Jean Trouillat, Les Suédois dans l’évêché de Bâle ou abrégé des faits qui se sont passés dans ce pays sous le gouvernement de Jean-Henri d’Ostein, Evêque de Bale. Traduit sur l’original latin du P. Sudan, S.J. professeur au collège de Porrentruy, Porrentruy, Imprimerie typographique de J. Trouillat & Cie, 1862. Père Claude Sudan (1579-1655) whose name as author of these texts was much later added on the flyleaf (p. VI), belonged to the Jesuit Order. Trained in theology and philosophy, he taught in Fribourg, in Porrentruy, served as confessor of the prince-bishop of Basel, Jean-Henri d'Ostein (episcopate 1629-1646), and wrote many works of history. This copy of A1339 is very consistent and has been carefully proofread and corrected.
Online Since: 12/11/2025