Latin Manuscripts (Ms. lat.)
A part of the 165 late medieval Latin manuscripts from the 14th and 15th century held by the Staatliche Bibliothek (State Library) Ansbach today were acquired from the monastery libraries of Riedfeld, Heidenheim and Würzburg, which were closed during the first half of the 16th century. These manuscripts were mostly written in the proximity of the monasteries and contain, in addition to ascetic-catechistic material, a small amount of literature specific of the Franciscan and Benedictine orders. They furthermore represent a source for a number of aspects of the Ius canonicum. Even if the number of these codices is small, they still offer an "insight in the book collections of the Franconian clergy at the end of the middle ages" (review of the manuscript catalogue by A. SCHMID, in: ZBLG 65 (2002) p. 699).
To a greater extent, this is true for the book holdings of the members of the seminary St. Gumbert in Ansbach, which is represented by around 59 manuscripts in this collection. The majority of texts originate in the academic, (late) scholastic teaching of theology, which was "the first to constitute theology as an academic discipline with the categories of Aristotelian reason, the ratiocinatio" (catalogue of Latin manuscripts I, introduction p. XVI). This is illustrated by a text witnessing the "quaestiones disputatae de potentia“ of Thomas of Aquin in Ms. lat. 135, whose survival had so far been unknown to research, and the so far only surviving copy of a commentary on Aristotle's concept of physics by the Erfurt Magister Myngodus in Ms. lat. 106. It is not surprising that in addition thereto, the manuscripts predominantly contain materials from the area of pastoral care, in the form of sermons, texts for the preparation of sermons and authoritative collections of model sermons.
In omni summa this collection so far mostly ignored by research "is of importance for a wide range of questions of our national history and the history of science". (Review of the manuscript catalogue by A. SCHMID in: ZBLG 59 (1996) p. 262). A number of specimens have been digitised to make them accessible to a wider range of interested researchers.