This fourteenth-century manuscript, copied in two columns by a single hand, contains a commentary on the lections of the Gospels and the Epistles for Lent. The numbering in the running titles counts 61, which are alphabetically listed in a long content index (p. 3-28). This index has been revised and corrected, along with the rest of the manuscript, in a darker ink. The citations of the Gospels and the Epistles are underlined in red. The various component parts of the sermons are indicated by an alphabetic letter, also written in red in the side margins, and the references – chiefly to Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, but also to Albert the Great – are written in an abbreviated form in the lower margin. The possession note (p. 1) states that the book belonged to the monastery of St. Gall, even before Abbot Diethelm Blarer applied his stamp between 1553 and 1564 (p. 462). In the fifteenth century, the red leather cover of the Gothic binding was itself covered by a second cover, in leather, and the two boards were decorated with metal bosses.
Online Since: 12/11/2024
This autograph manuscript of the jurist and monk Johannes Bischoff contains primarily a more-or-less alphabetically-ordered collection of canon law as well as a compilation of titles of the Decretales Gregorii IX with their parallel passages in the Decretum Gratiani, Liber Sextus, and the Clementinae. This is followed by further notes and additions, including some on the deeds of Columban and Gallus, as well as a treatise on law that Johannes Bischoff († 1495) wrote in connection with the building of a new abbey in Rorschach and its destruction.
Online Since: 12/11/2024
This paper manuscript contains the sixth-century grammarian Eugraphius' commentary on the comedies of Terence (and not a commentary on Donatus, as was thought by G. Scherrer, 1875). According to the colophon (p. 177), the text was elegantly copied by Johannes Merwart (from Wemding), known for his professional scribal activity when he was a student of canon law at the University of Basel. This volume belonged to the secretary of the town of Saint-Gall, Johannes Widenbach († ca. 1456), whose name and coat of arms appear in two places in the codex (p. 2 and 194), like in another manuscript kept at the Stiftsbibliothek (Cod. Sang. 749, lower pastedown). Based on the library stamp of abbot Diethelm Blarer (p. 178), the manuscript was in the Stiftsbibliothek since at least 1533-1564.
Online Since: 12/11/2024
Produced during the fourteenth century, this manuscript of tiny dimensions contains sermons, but also excerpts from the Church Fathers and the philosophers. It is copied by a single scribe (except for a few additions, such as the XV signa ante diem iudicii on ff. 119v-120r) on two columns, except for a few single-column folios (f. 5v-10v, 25r-30v). Simple initials, in red and blue, adorn the text. According to the possession note on f. 120v, the codex was at abbey of St. Gall by the fifteenth century at the latest.
Online Since: 12/11/2024
The bulk of this manuscript consists of Latin sermons from the temporal (pp. 9a-21b) and from the sanctoral (pp. 21b-127b). They were copied by a single fourteenth-century scribe on two columns and each sermon is introduced by a rubric. While most of the feasts have a single sermon, the feast of Saint Catherine has seven lections (pp. 89b-108b). The remainder of the manuscript was copied with a variable layout by different hands from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It contains sermons in Latin as well as in German. The last four pages come from a thirteenth-century breviary copied in a single column (pp. 177-180). A possession note (p. 127b) states that, in the fifteenth century, this codex belonged to a certain Johanna Sumerin de Messkirch: Qui hoc invenit, Iohanne Sumerin de Meskilch reddere debet … The front board of the half-leather Gothic binding has grooves and canals on the front edge; these in fact served to attach the board to the spine. Apparently, the front board, broken vertically along the back, was turned around, repaired, and reutilized.
Online Since: 12/11/2024
The manuscript has three codicological units (pp. 5–76, 77–168, 169–184), which differ in layout and script. They chiefly contain sermons, and a few Marian miracles in the second part (e.g., p. 118). Some feasts or saints, such as the Assumption (pp. 94-96, 171-175), St. John the Baptist (pp. 88, 175-178, 183-184) and especially Saint Catherine (pp. 65, 106–109, 148–153), appear in many or all parts of this manuscript. The binding, covered in red leather, dates from the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
Online Since: 12/11/2024
The manuscript is made up of seven codicological units (pp. 5–52, 53–76, 77–92, 93–124, 125–140, 141–156, 157–164), which are sometimes incomplete and which have different layouts, scripts, and decoration. They all contain sermons and were copied in the fourteenth century. Only the first series of sermons (pp. 5-46) ends with a table of contents (p. 46-52); at the beginning of series appears the library stamp of Abbot Diethelm Blarer on a manuscript fragment containing on the recto a sermon (p. 3) and, on the verso, a miracle involving a usurer (p. 4). The cardboard binding, covered with leather on the back and corners, has a fragment of a printed breviary and dates from the seventeenth/eighteenth century.
Online Since: 12/11/2024
This volume brings together two paper manuscripts (pp. 1-238, 239-429) of the sermons of Peregrinus de Oppeln (ca. 1260-1333), Dominican prior and provincial minister of Poland. The first is dated by the explicit (p. 218) to 18 July 1458 and contains his Sermones de sanctis (pp. 3-218). The following pages (pp. 218-236) are in the hand of the same copyist and include excerpts from the life of Saint Wiborada (pp. 220-236). The second manuscript contains Peregrinus de Oppeln's Sermones de tempore, but was copied in the fourteenth century (pp. 237-429). Introduced with a decorated initial (p. 239), this part is very neat, annotated, and bears an amusing caricature of Satan (p. 342). According to the possession note on p. 428, at least the second part belonged to the Franciscan Johannes Schirmer. As the original binding attests, these two parts had to have been bound together in the fifteenth century.
Online Since: 12/11/2024
This little manuscript contains a series of ascetic texts, copied in a single column by a single scribe. It begins with a text of the pseudo-Bernard de Clairvaux, the Formula honestae vitae (pp. 1-11a). Then follows the first book of David of Augsburg, De exterioris et interioris hominis compositione, which often circulated independently under the name Formula novitiorum (inc.: Primo semper debes considerare ad quid veneris…; [pp. 11a-63]). Next come three sermons, on the Last Judgment, the Song of Songs, and contempt for the world, respectively (pp. 64-83), followed by a list of chapters by the Abbot Bernard [of Clairvaux] on the Song of Songs (inc.: Incipiunt capitula Bernahardi [!] abbatis in cantica canticorum [pp. 83-84]). The poem Quinquaginta bona proverbialia occupies pages 85-94 (Morawski, p. XXXVIII), followed by the hymn, missing its first lines, De forma vivendi monachorum (AH, vol. 33, n° 220; p. 95-101). The final two texts are related to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: first a poem on his life (inc.: Anno milleno centeno cum duodeno…; Walther, Initia 1162; pp. 102-105) and then an incomplete poem on his miracles (inc.: Gaude claustralis contio…; p. 106). The limp binding is made with a fragment from a missal. On the top cover is glued a label with an old shelfmark corresponding to those from the 1461 manuscript catalogue of the monastery library (Cod. Sang. 1399, pp. 1-8), and indication that this volume was at Saint Gall's abbey by that date at the latest. The stamp of Abbot Diethelm Blarer, from between 1553 and 1564, appears towards the end of the manuscript (p. 101).
Online Since: 05/31/2024
This paper manuscript, copied in the fourteenth century by many hands, is a collection of spiritual texts. It has two fifteenth-century ex libris of the Abbey Library (p. 1), as well as the stamp of Abbot Diethelm Blarer, from between 1553 and 1564 (p. 64). On the top pastedown appears a table of contents contemporary to the fifteenth-century half binding in red leather. An excerpt from the Stimulus amoris (III, 17) starts the book (pp. 1-9). It is followed by a widely-copied book by the Franciscan Bonaventure, De triplice via, also known under the title Incendium amoris (pp. 10-25), and then a treatise on the eight beatitudes (pp. 25-36). Passages from John Chrysostom's De reparatione lapsi appear in two different places in this manuscript (pp. 41-54 and 186-193). Hugh of Saint Victor's Soliloquium de arra animae, also widely copied in the Middle Ages, follows on pages 54-64 (Goy 1976, n° 94). Finally, this volume contains the Speculum humanae salvationis (pp. 65-171), extended with two of its three non-typological chapters, De septem stationibus passionis Christi (pp. 171-177) and De septem tristitiis B. V. Mariae (pp. 177-185). Contrary to normal practice, this text is not illustrated; even the fact that it is rhymed is hardly observable, since it is copied continuously.
Online Since: 05/31/2024
This paper copy of the Speculum humanae salvationis (pp. 1-174), dated 30 April 1388, was produced in Wil by Johannis Phister de Gossow, who stated in the colophon (p. 174ab) that, having finished his work, he was off to play (ludere eat). A second text (pp. 178a-190b), produced by a scribe contemporary to the first, bears the rubric title De passione domini and finishes the manuscript. Before entering the possession of the Abbey Library of Saint Gall, at the latest during the abbacy of Diethelm Blarer (whose stamp from between 1553 and 1564 appears on p. 192), the codex belonged to Ulrich Varnbüler, burgomaster and imperial bailliff of Saint Gall from 1481 to 1490, as indicated by the ex libris written on the first page of the volume. On the front and back pastedowns of the original leather binding can be found the offsets of a manuscript, from which narrow strips of parchment served to protect the quires of the codex.
Online Since: 05/31/2024
Coming from the women's convent near the church of Sankt Leonhard in Saint Gall (p. 4), this paper manuscript transmits two works by Richard of Saint Victor (ca. 1110-1173), considered as forerunners of fourteenth-century “speculative mysticism”. The first text, Benjamin maior (pp. 4a-97a), is also known under the name of De contemplatione [eiusque commendatione], as it appears on the label glued to the spine of the codex. Each of the five books starts with a painted initial that is larger than those introducing the paragraphs and extends into the margins. Then follows the same author's Benjamin minor (pp. 97a-144a). The volume was copied by a single scribe who, while not leaving a name, copied a colophon common to many manuscripts: Explicit iste liber sit scriptor crimine liber. The last two columns of this volume (pp. 144b-145a) were copied by a different hand, which transcribes two chapters from the De spiritu et anima (inc.: Nobilis creatura est anima…, PL 40, col. 807-809), a text that was for a long time attributed to Augustine, but in fact dates to the twelfth century. The gothic binding dates from the 14th or 15th century. The wooden boards were covered with reused pieces of leather.
Online Since: 05/31/2024
The main copyist of this paper manuscript has covered almost the entirety of the pages with his tiny, compact script, full of abbreviations, only leaving a thin blank margin (more than 50 lines per page). The gatherings sometimes vary in size for the same text. The first of these texts consists in the Sermones de tempore by the Paris Master John of Abbeville (pp. 3-182). It is followed by the commentary on the decalogue by the Augustinian Hermit Henry of Friemar the Elder, De decem praeceptis (pp. 183-233). A series of anonymous sermons, for example on Saint Bernard (p. 239), the Assumption (p. 253), or on the decapitation of John the Baptist (p. 288), fill the remainder of the codex. An excerpt from the Elementarium logicae (inc.: [F]inis logici principalis est scire discernere…) by William of Ockham is inserted between these sermons (pp. 291-293). The manuscript belonged to the Abbey Library of Saint Gall at the latest by the time of Abbot Diethelm Blarer, as indicated by his stamp, which dates to between 1553 and 1564 (p. 300).
Online Since: 05/31/2024
The single copyist of this paper manuscript provides the dates in which the copy was completed in May and June 1398 (p. 187 and 448). The first part of the volume (pp. 3-187) contains a series of anonymous sermons on John the Baptist, the Virgin, the dedication of a church, etc. Some pages that follow have material for other sermons whose beginning is missing (pp. 189-204), followed by a series of blank pages (pp. 205-220). The second dated part includes a treatise on the five senses and various sermons, as stated by an explicit (p. 252), then more sermons, one of which is in German (pp. 258-259). The codex has been at the Abbey of Saint Gall since at least the fifteenth century, as indicated by the ownership note (p. 1). Among the numerous quire guards, sixteen are from a Hebrew manuscript in a square Ashkenazi script of a Talmudic text from the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century (see the description by Justine Isserles, Books within books, 2024). The other fragments, in Latin, come from a fourteenth-century charter.
Online Since: 05/31/2024
This volume consists of two manuscripts brought together, the first in parchment dating from the end of the thirteenth century and paginated in black ink from 7 to 118, the second in fifteenth-century paper and paginated in red pencil from 1 to 144. Judging by the binding, they were brought together in the nineteenth century, the period when the librarian of the Abbey of Saint Gall, Franz Weidmann, described the diverse contents of these two manuscripts on the first flyleaves (pp. 1-2). The first manuscript, probably copied in the south of France, contains a Latin poem, Certamen animae, composed by Raimond Astruc (pp. 7-95 in black ink), followed by another piece by the same author, Epistola de consolatione (pp. 95-98 in black ink). Letters of Charles I of Anjou, some verse texts concerning his victories, and moral satires (against the vices of the world, or against the religious orders) round out this first part (Delisle 1916). According to a note, a former Jesuit turned Reformation preacher in Montbéliard gave this manuscript to Bartholomäus Schobinger in Saint-Gall in 1598 (p. 5 in black ink). The second part of Cod. Sang. 1008, copied by a single fifteenth-century scribe, begins with the text by the Carthusian Heinrich Eger de Kalkar, De puritate conscientiae (pp. 1-17 in red pencil). A dialogue in Latin prose between Death and Master Polycarpus, Colloquium de morte (Pirożyńska 1966), follows (pp. 18-25 in red pencil). Then come meditations on the Passion of Christ (pp. 26-47 in red pencil), meditations of Saint Anselm (pp. 48-67 in red pencil), and, further, Bonaventure's De institutione novitiorum (pp. 116-139 in red pencil).
Online Since: 05/31/2024
This small and thick paper codex is comprised of around a dozen codicological units and contains many texts copied by several different hands between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It contains sermons and various treatises such as the Speculum boni et mali (pp. 1-48), the Speculum monachorum (pp. 62-65), Jean Gerson's Opus tripartitum (pp. 73-122), the De malitia mulierum (p. 463-475), texts on the mass – one of which is an exhortation to say mass (pp. 122-144) –, the Visiones Pauli (pp. 159-167), some exempla (pp. 297-328), a computus (p. 353-390), as well as a series of letters. Some manuscript fragments serve as quire guards. Among these should be noted the remarkable presence of uncial fragments from the seventh or eighth century (p. 84-s1-2, 180-s1-3, 204-s1-3, 224-s1-3, 288-s1-3, 304-s1-3), all from a Psalter. Likely, they come from the same manuscript as that described by A. Allgeier (1929), dated to the end of the seventh century (CLA 7, n° 985), and certain more important fragments of which are in Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 1395.17 (former Cod. Sang. 1395, p. 370-391.
Online Since: 05/31/2024
This parchment manuscript has two collections of sermons on saints. The first is ascribed to the Dominican Peregrinus de Oppeln (pp. 3-250), whose name appears in the rubrics at the top of the winter (p. 3) and summer (p. 131) parts. The second collection, copied by a hand contemporary to the first, contains sermons by Jacobus de Voragine (pp. 251-346). That these authors were dominican is reflected in the importance given, for example, to Saint Catherine of Siena by Peregrinus (three sermons are dedicated to her, pp. 239-250), or to Saint Dominic by Jacobus de Voragine (two sermons on pp. 288-290, 311-315). On the other hand, the saints that are specific to the collection of Peregrinus, prior provincial of Poland, such as Adalbert, Wenceslas, or Hedwig, have been omitted. The copy has been made with care and is decorated systematically with pen-flourished initials. Contemporary annotations summarize the content of certain sermons, occasionally in schematic form. The ex libris (p. 351) indicates that before entering the Abbey Library, at the latest under the abbacy of Diethelm Blarer (whose stamp, dated to between 1553 and 1564, appears on p. 347), this manuscript belonged to Angela Varnbüler (1441-1509), prioress of the Dominican convent of Saint Catherine in Saint Gall (Mengis 2013, n° 52).
Online Since: 05/31/2024
Cod. Sang. 1398 is one of eight fragment volumes (that is, volumes that contain exclusively fragments) of the Abbey Library of St. Gall. Between 1774 and 1785, the St. Gall monks Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger (1756–1823) and Ildefons von Arx (1755–1833) detached numerous fragments from bindings in which they had served for centuries as pastedowns, flyleaves, spine linings, and endleaf guards. At an advanced age, Ildefons von Arx had the fragments bound in eight thematically-organized bindings and dedicated these in 1822 to his friend Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger. Chiefly in the twentieth century, researchers found additional, small fragments in bindings, from which they were then removed and added to the existing fragment volumes or into the collection of fragments. Before 1875, 121 folios were removed from Cod. Sang. 1398 and bound in a separate volume, Cod. Sang. 1398b. (The old volume with the remaining folios received the shelfmark Cod. Sang. 1398a). From 2003 to 2004 the extensive fragment volume Cod. Sang. 1398b was disbound for conservation reasons. The fragments were rebound (in the same sequence) in 18 folders (“Ganzpapierbroschuren”). The new, now authoritative pagination begins with 1 in each folder and includes only the fragments (and not the empty paper leaves). To be cited (for example): St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 1398b.1, pp. 1-2 (= Cod. Sang. 1398b, Folder 1, pages 1-2). The first folder of Cod. Sang. 1398b contains fragments from biblical texts (Gn).
Online Since: 05/31/2024
Cod. Sang. 1398 is one of eight fragment volumes (that is, volumes that contain exclusively fragments) of the Abbey Library of St. Gall. Between 1774 and 1785, the St. Gall monks Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger (1756–1823) and Ildefons von Arx (1755–1833) detached numerous fragments from bindings in which they had served for centuries as pastedowns, flyleaves, spine linings, and endleaf guards. At an advanced age, Ildefons von Arx had the fragments bound in eight thematically-organized bindings and dedicated these in 1822 to his friend Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger. Chiefly in the twentieth century, researchers found additional, small fragments in bindings, from which they were then removed and added to the existing fragment volumes or into the collection of fragments. Before 1875, 121 folios were removed from Cod. Sang. 1398 and bound in a separate volume, Cod. Sang. 1398b. (The old volume with the remaining folios received the shelfmark Cod. Sang. 1398a). From 2003 to 2004 the extensive fragment volume Cod. Sang. 1398b was disbound for conservation reasons. The fragments were rebound (in the same sequence) in 18 folders (“Ganzpapierbroschuren”). The new, now authoritative pagination begins with 1 in each folder and includes only the fragments (and not the empty paper leaves). To be cited (for example): St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 1398b.1, pp. 1-2 (= Cod. Sang. 1398b, Folder 1, pages 1-2). The second folder of Cod. Sang. 1398b contains fragments from biblical texts (Gn and Ex).
Online Since: 05/31/2024
Cod. Sang. 1398 is one of eight fragment volumes (that is, volumes that contain exclusively fragments) of the Abbey Library of St. Gall. Between 1774 and 1785, the St. Gall monks Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger (1756–1823) and Ildefons von Arx (1755–1833) detached numerous fragments from bindings in which they had served for centuries as pastedowns, flyleaves, spine linings, and endleaf guards. At an advanced age, Ildefons von Arx had the fragments bound in eight thematically-organized bindings and dedicated these in 1822 to his friend Johann Nepomuk Hauntinger. Chiefly in the twentieth century, researchers found additional, small fragments in bindings, from which they were then removed and added to the existing fragment volumes or into the collection of fragments. Before 1875, 121 folios were removed from Cod. Sang. 1398 and bound in a separate volume, Cod. Sang. 1398b. (The old volume with the remaining folios received the shelfmark Cod. Sang. 1398a). From 2003 to 2004 the extensive fragment volume Cod. Sang. 1398b was disbound for conservation reasons. The fragments were rebound (in the same sequence) in 18 folders (“Ganzpapierbroschuren”). The new, now authoritative pagination begins with 1 in each folder and includes only the fragments (and not the empty paper leaves). To be cited (for example): St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 1398b.1, pp. 1-2 (= Cod. Sang. 1398b, Folder 1, pages 1-2). The third folder of Cod. Sang. 1398b contains fragments from biblical texts (Ex and Lv).
Online Since: 05/31/2024