Re-cataloguing of the Latin manuscripts from Freising at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich

The collection group from the former chapter of Freising constitutes one of the core collections among the holdings of manuscripts of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich due to its intellectual-historical importance and its age. The foundation of the monastery library and of the scriptorium in Freising goes back to the 8th century. After the secularisation, around 400 medieval (Latin and German) manuscripts from Freising came to the Munich court library in 1802/ 1803. In the collection group of Codices latini monacenses, 366 codices from the Freising cathedral library are listed today under numbers 6201 – 6787. In addition, there are nine manuscripts from other religious institutions in Freising (Clm 6801 – 6832 from the Franciscan monastery, the collegiate church St. Andrä and the Premonstratensian abbey St. Peter and Paul in Neustift near Freising). A further 28 manuscripts from Freising, the provenance of which could be ascertained only later on, have been incorporated under various call numbers in the so-called "Supplement" (Clm 23001 ff. "Codices diversae originis").

So far, the collection of manuscripts from Freising held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek could be found in its entirety only in an inventory catalogue. The in-depth cataloguing of the parchment codices from the Freising cathedral library, thus of the older parts of the collection, according to modern scholarly standards, was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) between 1990 and 2003. During this period, descriptions of the 229 Latin parchment manuscripts from the chapter of Freising were compiled. The first catalogue volume compiled by Dr. Günter Glauche (Clm 6201 – 6316) was published in the year 2000; the second one (for Clm 6317 – 6437) by the same author in the year 2011. All 229 manuscript descriptions from the two catalogue volumes published in print have already been made accessible in Manuscripta mediaevalia. So far, no digital images are available online from the second catalogue volume for copyright reasons.

Catalogue volumes on Freising

With this project, the re-cataloguing for the 178 predominantly late medieval paper manuscripts from Freising (Clm 6473 – 6832 and Supplement), and the in-depth cataloguing of the collection group in a third and last catalogue volume (will be published by the publishing house Harrassowitz presumably in the year 2020) has been concluded completely.