Medieval manuscript fragments from the Benedictine Abbey of Mondsee

This go!digital-2.0 (ÖAW) project focused on the manuscripts from the Benedictine monastery of Mondsee (748-1791) that were re-used in book bindings. Founded in 748, Mondsee saw several periods of high activity in his scriptorium. Already during the Carolingian era manuscripts were copied in the monastery, among them the famous Old High German “Monseer Fragmente”. The scriptorium flourished again in the 12th century and, to an even larger extent, in the second half of the 15th century. It was then that a new library building was erected and many older manuscripts were re-bound. Parchment for these new bindings was sourced from older manuscripts that were no longer considered relevant or useful and were then cut-up by book binders.

Many of the manuscripts produced in Mondsee therefore only survive as fragments in manuscripts, prints and archival material. After the dissolution of the monastery in 1791 these documents were transferred to what are today the Austrian National Library, the State Library of Upper Austria and the State Archive of Upper Austria. In this project we digitized and catalogued these dispersed fragments and uploaded them to the international data base Fragmentarium for free public access. Special attention was given to the reconstruction of cut-up manuscripts that were re-used in a large number of different bindings.

Project Partners

Austrian National Library State Library of Upper Austria State Archive of Upper Austria University of Vienna, Institute of Austrian Historical Research

Project Team

Andreas Fingernagel (team leader) Ivana Dobcheva Katharina Kaska Larissa Rasinger Veronika Wöber