Showing posts with label incunabula. Show all posts
Showing posts with label incunabula. Show all posts

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Manuscript and incunable research links

This listing reflects my “frequently consulted” list of resources for manuscript and incunable research as I’m working on a medieval/early modern house of tertiaries, Thalbach in Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Austria. My aim in compiling this list of links is not to be systematic, but rather utilitarian, since I’m now frequently across browsers and even computers, and want “my” link list all in one place. There is a strong bias toward vernacular German / Austrian resources, since Vorarlberg was linked sometimes to Bavaria, sometimes to Tyrol and Innsbruck, and always to the broader Bodensee orbit.

Though I don’t claim “coverage” of digital resources, I did want my list to be useful to others, so I’ve done a few things. I’ve grouped it in clusters that might help a new researcher get started. I’ve tried to provide a brief explanation of what a resource is, and sometimes provided a “jump in” link that let’s you navigate more quickly to a search page.

I’m certainly open to adding further resources as they come to my attention, and invite your contributions. You can reach me at my vanderbilt.edu email (cynthia.cyrus “at”…) with suggestions.

Navigation

Manuscripts, Works, & Catalogues

UMBRELLA SITES FOR DIGITIZED MANUSCRIPTS

  • Manuscripta.at – digitized manuscripts from Austria: https://manuscripta.at/digitalisate.php
  • e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/
  • KdiH – German-language illustrated manuscripts of the Middle Ages: https://kdih.badw.de/datenbank/start
  • Siân Echartd, Medieval Manuscripts on the Web – guide to online manuscript resources (scroll down for location-based listings) https://sianechard.ca/web-pages/medieval-manuscripts-on-the-web/
  • Open Culture – list of 160,000 medieval manuscripts online https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/160000-medieval-manuscripts-online-where-to-find-them.html
  • Mechthild transmission Study (MMMMO) – Overview of manuscript transmission of Liber specialis gratiae https://zfdg.de/2024_002

    • FRAGMENTS

    INCUNABLES

    CALENDARS & SAINTS

    Nuns' Libraries (Projects)

    MEMORIA

    Ottosen, Responsories of the Latin Office of the Dead (a reformulated version of the database undergirding his doctoral thesis, The Responsories and Versicles of the Latin Office of the Dead, https://www.cantusplanus.de/databases/Ottosen/index.html

    Hugener, Buchführung für die Ewigkeit, Totengedenken, Verschriftlichung und Traditionsbildung im Spätmittelalter, https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=rgVMDAAAQBAJ&hl=en

    Early Modern Vorarlberg Resources

    Let me know if this was useful. And, to navigate back around the page, here's that navigation list again:

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    Sunday, March 2, 2025

    The Seelengärtlein (Hortulus animae)

    The title, Hortulus anime, with an elaborate first initial

    The Little Garden of the Soul stands as one of the central prayerbooks of the 16th century, printed and reprinted, translated, and circulated not only in print but also in manuscript. It had first appeared in its Latin guise in 1498, and the German version emerged in 1501. We know it in its German form mostly by the title – Seelengärtlein – taken from a manuscript version (Cod. bibl. pal. Vindob. 2706), which Friedrich Dörnhöffer issued as one of the significant facsimiles of the 20th century. Published in 1911 as a 3-volume set, that facsimile is the standard “footnote me” work for early modern German prayer, famous for its art and for its extensive historical introduction.

    But, alas, I did not happen to buy a 3-volume book printed more than 50 years before I was born. Neither, alack and alas, did my University library. And though the book is out of copyright, it’s not readily available in places I have looked.

    What to do? Nerd out, of course! My goal as a practical person back in the day was to find a digital reproduction of one of the many early modern prints of the prayer collection. Finding relevant incunabula often has the added advantage of having woodcuts to help with navigation. And who doesn’t love a picture book?

    FINDING PRINTS
    For the world I inhabit – German language prints pre-1600 – working on such things means consulting the Verzeichnis der Drucke 16. Jahrhundert, also known as VD16 (Register of printed works of the 16th century) 
        http://www.gateway-bayern.de/index_vd16.html

    Normally, I would have also gone to the ISTC (Incunabula Short Title Catalogue) – and I did, when I initially worked on this project. But ISTC is a British Library resource and thus was knocked out by the October 2023 cyber-attack. Still, it should come back some day:
        https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/

    Then there’s the GW (Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke), the complete catalog of incunabula, but I find it much easier to go there with a printer, place, or year in mind.
        https://www.gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/

    To be honest, the format of the VD16 is the easiest for me to navigate, especially since its display supports clicking through to the full text of the items I’m most curious about.

    SEARCHING CREATIVELY
    If you search “Hortulus” on VD16, and then ask for the results in chronologically ascending order, you’ll see just how many editions there were!  (Of course, you have to weed out the Hortulus elegantiarum and the Hortulus Musices if you’re looking for editions of the prayer book.)

    The Peter Schöffer d.J. edition of 1513 confirms the German name, though with a suitably creative period spelling:

    Hortulus anime.|| Zů teütsch genant der || selen g#[ae]rtlin.||

    Hortulus animae. In German, known as the “Selen Gärtlin.”

    But a remarkable number of the editions are either listed solely by the Latin title (and may in fact be the Latin edition, of course) or just give the Latin title and then say “in German.” But, using the spelling that Schöffer used, “Selen” (for modern-German “Seelen,” Souls), up pop a number of other versions – though the Seelengärtlein, our “Little Garden,” is not to be confused with the Selen Wurzgarten (The soul’s herb-garden), a book which starts with a dramatic picture of a hell-mouth with the devils descending thither:

    München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- 2 P.lat. 1766  Der Seelen Wurzgarten Augsburg
    1504, VD16 S 5276


    It’s dramatic, but it isn’t prayers; the Wurzgarten is narrative, and features an awful lot of devils.

    Our prayerbook version – the regular garden, not the herb one – can be found in a German translation by Brant, published in Straßburg in 1501 by Johann Wähinger (VD16 H 5078) and again in 1502 (VD16 ZV 8229). In that 1501 version, Brant stakes a strong claim to authorship:
     

    Ortulus anĩe. Der selen gärtlin wurd ich genent ... || Zu Straßburg in sym vatterlant || Hat mich Sebastianus Brant || Besehen vnd vast corrigiert || Zum tütschem ouch vil transferiert

    [H]Ortulus anime. I was called the selen gärtlin ... || In Strasbourg in his fatherland || Sebastianus Brant || Inspected me and corrected me a lot || Also transferred to the German.

    Brant inspected and corrected – extensively, he claims! – and “transferred” it into German. It’s a big project, so perhaps his over-the-top claims are warranted.

    And from there, as we have seen, the prints spread and spread. There are a lot of them, and one could spend years comparing them all. But that isn’t my particular rabbit hole.

    ACCESSING THE PRAYERS OF THE SEELENGÄRTLEIN
    Because I was interested in accessing the prayer-texts themselves, and not just the digitized version, I worked through the list of editions on VD16 for one that had an OCR version as well as an online visual representation. During pandemic times (back in 2020), I settled on Johannes Knoblouch’s edition of the Seelengärtlein (Hortulus animae) from Straßburg, 1507 [VD16 H 5082]. That version was available in two ways:

    1) directly from the BSB: urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00009026-0 – use the URN resolver: https://nbn-resolving.org/gui/urn to navigate there
    2) from Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=AdhCMsIz-jkC.

    With both copies in hand, and time hanging heavy on my hands, I indexed the volume. The index was built starting from the volume’s Register (found on fols. 243v-247v), and adopts the foliation conventions from the BSB copy. Since Knoblouch himself used a combination of signature (Sig) and folio (fol) in the register in order to show location within the gathering structure of the volume, I preserve them in columns 2 and 3 of the index.

    Overall, I decided that the subsections of prayers – sections which might spin out and be transmitted independently or might migrate into another prayer complex – needed to be included, but I greyed out all but the first section, so one can readily see which is the starting prayer (white) and which the subsections (grey) in a multi-partite prayer.

    A sample from the index -- the rubric is in red, the first segment is white, and the subsequent sections are greyed out


    To round out my work, I gave brief descriptions of the 73 woodcuts from the perspective of navigating the volume. Thus, I list St Gertrude, but not her cats -- or are those the mice that she banished? None of the animals made my description, for it is St Gertrude herself who is the navigational marker, setting the reader up for the next prayer "Seyest gegrůßt heilige iungfraw sant Gerdrut die du geboren bist von königlichem stammen..." [Hail, holy virgin Saint Gertrude, born of royal descent].

    For those who are intrigued, I have made the index available through google sheets:

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14UgeWOq9iPZ88uQiWw6a0PnPCrADabp5YqrGazk6Tuk/edit?usp=sharing

    You too can play with the index by sorting columns this way and that way, and use it to navigate within the digital covers of the book itself.


    AND IN CONCLUSION:
    The Seelengärtlein may have begun as a 16th-century prayerbook, but its history is one of persistence, adaptation, and circulation across languages, formats, and centuries. My deep dive into its editions—navigating catalogs, parsing digital copies, and building an index—reflects the same impulse that shaped its transmission: the desire to make these prayers accessible, ordered, and usable. Whether in manuscript, print, or digital form, the Seelengärtlein continues to grow, much like the metaphorical garden it evokes. 


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    Happy January from the Teutsch Römisch Breuier (1535): Of Calendars, Convent Books, and the Lives They Touched

    It is the first day of the second quarter of the 21st Century, and thus a time for a fresh new start. I’ll begin here with a bit of mate...