St. Gallen Abbey Library
The Abbey Library of St. Gallen is the abbey library of the former Benedictine Abbey of St. Gallen .
This emerged from the cell that the Irish monk St. Gallus founded around 612 in the Steinach valley . The St. Gallen Abbey Library, founded no later than 719, is one of the most important historical libraries in the world. It is the only one of the large monastery libraries of the early Middle Ages, the quality of which has remained intact from the 8th century to the present day. It owns 2100 manuscripts , 1650 incunabula (printed works up to 1500) and early prints (printed between 1501 and 1520), a total of around 170,000 books and other media.
In 1983 the library was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the St. Gallen Abbey District .
The documents in the Abbey Archives and in the Abbey Library in St. Gallen were declared World Document Heritage in 2017 .
Meaning and history
Students gathered around St. Gall and the cell he founded while he was still alive. Even after Gallus' death - probably around 640/650 - the hermit cell was able to outlast the decades. In 719 the Alemanne Otmar von St. Gallen took over the management of the community and expanded it into a Benedictine imperial abbey , which experienced its first economic, religious and spiritual boom in the 9th century. The manuscripts required for use in church services , schools and administration were produced by the monks in their own scriptorium (writing workshop), which has been documented in the St. Gallen monastery since the middle of the 8th century.
The number of manuscripts in the St. Gallen monastery grew steadily. The oldest catalog of the main library , created between 860 and 865, lists a total of 426 titles, sorted by subject area, with 294 entries. There was also a school library and a church library as well as book collections from individual monks.
Several manuscripts were lost due to the Hungarian invasion of 926 and the conflagration of 937. However, thanks to the inclusion of Wiborada , larger losses could be prevented. This had foreseen the Hungarian invasion, so that the manuscripts could be brought to safety on the island of Reichenau . Wiborada herself was slain in her cell by the Magyars known as Hungarians . As the first woman in church history, she was officially canonized by the Pope in 1047 . Today she is considered the patroness of libraries and book lovers.
Even the turmoil of the Reformation around 1529 did not affect the library much, as the reformer and mayor of the city, Joachim von Watt (1484–1551, called Vadian), as a humanist, was aware of the library's value.
However, over the centuries, a number of manuscripts have been removed by high-ranking dignitaries. The library suffered its most significant losses in the Toggenburg War in 1712, when the victorious Zurich and Bernese troops occupied the monastery and brought numerous manuscripts and prints to Zurich and Bern. The resulting " cultural goods dispute" between St. Gallen and Zurich was settled in 2006 through mediation by the Federal Council . The copy of the St. Gallen globe made as part of this agreement has been exhibited in the abbey library since 2009. In addition, the Zurich Central Library returned 40 manuscripts to the Abbey Library. At the same time, the Zurich government donated the fragment of the oldest surviving biography of Gallus, the so-called Vita Vetustissima, to the abbey library, which was made before the middle of the 9th century .
In 1805, two years after the founding of the canton, the prince abbey of St. Gallen was dissolved, which until the end had been one of the most important, flourishing and most learned monasteries in the West. The monastery library and the monastery archive remained in their original locations. In 1813, the library's holdings were completely transferred to the newly founded Catholic denomination of the Canton of St. Gallen , the public corporation of St. Gallen Catholics.
Significant documents - the oldest German book
The fact that the St. Gallen Abbey District was elevated to the status of a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983 is primarily due to the collection of manuscripts in the Abbey Library. Around 400 manuscripts from around 2100 date from before the year 1100, i.e. from the actual heyday of the St. Gallen monastery.
These include the copy of the Rule of Benedict , which is closest to the original in terms of text history , artistically significant manuscripts such as the Folchart Psalter , the Golden Psalter and the Gospel Longum with the ivory tablets of the Tuotilo of St. Gallen or important manuscripts on the development of the German language, including the palimpsestierte glossary Codex Sangallensis 912 as one of the oldest library manuscripts, the oldest German book, the Abrogans with our father of the Codex Sangallensis 911 as well as the translations Notker des Deutschen ( Notker III. ).
The neumen manuscripts from this period, especially those from Codex Sangallensis 359 , are of great importance for the restitution of Gregorian chant . The St. Gallen Abbey Library is also known for its collection of early medieval Irish manuscripts, the largest of its kind on the European continent.
Another important document of that time, which is still kept in the abbey library today, is the St. Gallen monastery plan . Two monks of the Reichenau monastery, including the librarian Reginbert, created this oldest surviving building plan in Europe and probably also in the world with regard to Abbot Gozbert's new buildings, probably in exchange with St. Gallen monks between 819 and 830. The plan gives detailed information Information about what a large Carolingian monastery looked like and is widely discussed in research.
The abbey library has a document that is important for German medieval studies with the so-called Nibelungen manuscript B, the oldest composite manuscript of Middle High German courtly epic. The manuscript, which was created in the Alpine region around 1260, contains well-known works such as the Parzival and the Willehalm by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach , the Nibelungenlied with the lament that followed the heroic epic, and Karl des Strickers .
A special feature is the Egyptian mummy of the Schepenese , which has been owned by the library together with its sarcophagi since 1836 . Their lifetime is estimated to be from about 650 to 610 BC. Chr. Indicated.
Library room
The book room of the monastery library, artfully decorated and balanced in its proportions, is regarded as the most beautiful non-ecclesiastical baroque room in Switzerland and one of the most perfect library buildings in the world . The hall was built between 1758 and 1767 under Abbots Cölestin II. Gugger von Staudach and Beda Angehrn .
Above the portal of the baroque hall , which is flanked by columns , a cartouche contains the Greek inscription ΨYXHΣ IATPEION, which freely translated means “sanctuary of the soul” or “soul pharmacy ”. The hall is laid out in the form of a five-bay wall pillar hall. Halfway up there is a gallery around the hall . In length, bookcases and window niches alternate in a wave-like manner. The pillars are recessed into the hall and reinforced at the corners with Corinthian decorative columns. Between these and flat pilasters, the books stand in latticed bookshelves.
The fir wood floor , in which four large stars and vine-like loops in walnut wood are embedded, is particularly worthy of protection . The hall may only be entered with felt slippers. The ornate wooden interiors were made in the monastery’s own workshop .
The ceiling is decorated with numerous artistic stucco work and vaulted images. Part of the sequence of images refers to the function of a monastery library. The largest pictures represent the four first ecumenical councils ( Nicaea 325 , Constantinople 381 , Ephesus 431 , Chalcedon 451) . The doctors of the church are symbolically represented in the so-called side caps. Smaller grisaille paintings (in shades of gray) show the scientific care of the monastery. Paintings by the two builders Cölestin Gugger (1740–1767) and Beda Angehrn (1767–1796) are attached to the narrow sides of the hall at the level of the gallery. An iron door on the south side of the gallery leads into the inaccessible former manuscript cabinet with valuable inlay work from the monastery carpentry.
Were involved in construction Peter Thumb , father and son, from Bezau in Vorarlberg as a builder; the stucco work comes from the brothers Johann Georg Gigl and Matthias Gigl from Wessobrunn , the ceiling paintings from Joseph Wannenmacher from Tomerdingen; the woodwork was made by monastery brother Gabriel Loser from Wasserburg near Lindau and his employees.
present
Today, the St. Gallen Abbey Library serves on the one hand as a museum with annually changing exhibitions in which it shows pieces from its manuscript and incunabula holdings. On the other hand, it is still an active lending library that is free for anyone interested to use. As a specialist library with a focus on Medieval Studies , Codicology and Paleography , it is used by researchers from all over the world. It owns around 170,000 books and other media from which documents published after 1900 can be borrowed. In addition, the older printed books can be used in the reading room. The manuscripts and incunabula, on the other hand, cannot be borrowed and inspection in the reading room is only possible in exceptional cases.
In order to enable a broader audience to read and view the manuscripts, the medieval and a selection of early modern codices have been digitized since 2002 as part of the “Codices Electronici Sangallenses” (CESG) project and have been made available in a virtual library since 2007. In spring 2014, a good 500 digitized manuscripts were available.
Abbey librarians
literature
- Johannes Duft : Abbey Library of St. Gallen. History, baroque hall, manuscripts. 9th edition. Verlag am Klosterhof, St. Gallen 1992, ISBN 978-3-906616-17-9 .
- Adolf Fäh : The building history of the Abbey Library in St. Gallen. Kreutzmann, Zurich 1900. ( digitized version )
- Beat Matthias von Scarpatetti : The manuscripts of the St. Gallen Abbey Library. Codices 547-669. Hagiographica, Historica, Geographica 8. – 18. Century. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 978-3-447-04716-6 .
- Beat Matthias von Scarpatetti: The manuscripts of the St. Gallen Abbey Library. Codices 1726–1984 (14th – 19th centuries). Descriptive Directory. Verlag am Klosterhof, St. Gallen 1983, ISBN 978-3-906616-02-5 .
- Gustav Scherer: Directory of the manuscripts and incunabula of the Vadian library in St. Gallen. Printed by the Zollikofer'schen Offizin, St. Gallen 1864. (Digital copies: Google Books , BSB Munich , archive.org ).
- Gustav Scherrer: Directory of the manuscripts of the Abbey Library of St. Gallen. Halle 1875. ( as an online database with facsimiles , also available on Google Books)
- Gustav Scherrer: Directory of Incunabula in the Abbey Library of St. Gallen. G. Moosberger, St. Gallen 1880 ( digitized version ).
- Karl Schmuki, Peter Ochsenbein, Cornel Dora: Cimelia Sangallensia. Hundreds of treasures from the St. Gallen Abbey Library. Verlag am Klosterhof, St. Gallen 2000, ISBN 978-3-906616-50-6 .
- Ernst Tremp, Johannes Huber, Karl Schmuki: St. Gallen Abbey Library. A tour through history, premises and collections. Verlag am Klosterhof, St. Gallen 2003, ISBN 978-3-906616-84-1 .
Trivia
The Swiss writer Thomas Hürlimann , nephew of the former abbey librarian Johannes Duft , spent a summer as a boy with his uncle in the library. The author wrote about this period in his novella Fräulein Stark (2001).
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Documentary heritage of the former Abbey of Saint Gall in the Abbey Archives and the Abbey Library of Saint Gall , UNESCO Memory of the World, accessed June 26, 2019.
Cultural heritage: old town of Bern (1983) | Abbey district with library , archive and collegiate church St. Gallen (1983) | Benedictine convent St. Johann in Müstair (1983) | Three castles and fortifications of Bellinzona (2000) | Lavaux Vineyard Terraces (2007) | Albula and Bernina lines of the Rhaetian Railway (2008) | La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle , watchmaking and urban planning (2009) | Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps (2011) | The architectural work of Le Corbusier : Villa Le Lac and Maison Clarté (2016)
Natural heritage: Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch (2001) | Monte San Giorgio (2003) | Tectonic Arena Sardona (2008)
Collections on Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Geneva and Neuchâtel (2011) | Discount on the Montreux Jazz Festival (2013) | Bibliotheca Bodmeriana (2015) | Statements by indigenous peoples at the United Nations from 1982 to 2015 (2017) | Document heritage in the Abbey Archives and in the Abbey Library St. Gallen (2017)
Coordinates: 47 ° 25 '21.9 " N , 9 ° 22' 35.2" E ; CH1903: seven hundred and forty-six thousand two hundred and eight / 254245