Microfilming projects

Hill Monastic Manuscript Library

Switzerland

Introduction

Although the founders of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (then the Monastic Microfilm Library) hoped to begin microfilming operations in Switzerland in 1965, it was not until November, 1995, that HMML began a three-year filming project in this Alpine nation.

Aelred Tegels, OSB, the field director for HMML, supervised the filming in the monastic libraries of Engelberg, Einsiedeln, and Sarnen.

Stiftsbibliothek Engelberg

Count Conrad of Seldenburen founded the monastery of Our Lady of the Angels at Engelberg in 1120. The abbey drew on the support of popes and German emperors and grew quickly during the twelfth century. In 1602 the reigning abbot of Engelberg founded the Swiss Congregation, still the governing body of the Swiss Benedictines. Engelberg established numerous daughter houses, including two in the United States: Conception Abbey in Missouri and Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon.

Like other Swiss Benedictine houses, Engelberg maintained a school, which played an important role in the development of the library. The collection contains a few manuscripts older than the abbey itself, (including a tenth-century commentary on Benedict's Rule) and thirty-five codices copied during the abbacy of Frowinus (1142-1178), but most of the manuscripts date from the later Middle Ages. Manuscripts from the associated convent of St. Andrew's, a late medieval center of mysticism, are also in the Engelberg collection.

The staff at HMML are currently creating a searchable database of catalog records for HMML's microfilmed manuscripts. Until this is complete, for more information about Engelberg's manuscripts please contact the curator.

Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln

Einsiedeln was founded as a Benedictine monastery in 934 on the site of the hermitage of Saint Meinrad, who was murdered by robbers in 861. According to local tradition, Saint Meinrad himself once owned the library's ninth-century copy of St. Benedict's Rule, one of the oldest extant copies in the world. While this tradition, although plausible, cannot be historically verified, the library does possess a number of manuscripts from the eighth and ninth centuries.

The Einsiedeln collection includes more than seventy manuscripts from the tenth century and more than sixty from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, indicating that the monks continually acquired books needed for the liturgy and spiritual reading, as well as for education in the liberal arts. The first monks brought books with them and obtained others from established scriptoria: for example, MS 17, a magnificent gospel book, came from the abbey of Sankt Gallen.

Einsiedeln's own scriptorium, already functioning soon after the founding, supplied more books for the community. One of the manuscripts written in Einsiedeln during this early period is the splendid little tenth-century MS 121, the oldest extant chant book complete with Gregorian neumes. Other manuscripts from this period include 13 manuscripts with the works of Boethius (treatises on the liberal arts as well as commentaries on Aristotle), some 50 manuscripts with works of more than 25 classical authors (Cicero, Sallust and Virgil, and also Hippocrates and Galenus), and many manuscripts with works of Church Fathers (Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory the Great) and early medieval theologians (Bede, Rhabanus, Maurus, Walafrid Strabo). The eleventh-century MS 1, a monumental Bible, and the twelfth-century MS 111, a sacramentary, show that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries the scriptorium developed an artistic style rivaling those of Reichenau and Sankt Gallen.

The end of the twelfth century also marks the end of a functioning scriptorium in Einsiedeln. In the later Middle Ages admission to the monastic community was restricted to the higher nobility, with the result that the monks were few in number and had quite different concerns. The abbey library, however, continued to grow. Volumes in German as well as Latin were commissioned or bought, and some were donated. Einsiedeln also inherited more than 70 manuscripts (dating from the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) from the Swiss abbey of Rheinau, which was secularized in 1862.

During the summer of 1997, HMML sponsored the filming of the manuscripts of Einsiedeln. The reputable firm of Canon, based in Dietlikon, a suburb of Zürich, conducted the filming. In accordance with HMML's usual practice, Canon filmed all pre-1600 manuscripts, as well as a few particularly interesting ones from the seventeenth century. A total of 570 manuscripts were filmed.

The staff at HMML are currently creating a searchable database of catalog records for HMML's microfilmed manuscripts. Until this is complete, for more information about Einsiedeln's manuscripts please contact the curator.

Benediktinerkollegium Sarnen

The manuscripts at the Benediktinerkollegium in Sarnen are the remains of the library of the abbey of Muri, a daughter house of Einsiedeln. When Muri was secularized in 1842, the evicted monks took many of the manuscripts with them to Sarnen.

A few of the manuscripts in the collection date from the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but most date from the later Middle Ages and early modern times. Many volumes belonged originally to other monasteries or convents. When the neighboring convent of nuns at Hermetschwil was suppressed in the eighteenth century, the abbey of Muri acquired its manuscripts. Hermetschwil was restored, however, and the nuns have reclaimed some of the manuscripts.

HMML sponsored the microfilming of Sarnen's 120 manuscripts in the fall of 1997. The firm Tecnocor, based in Ebikon, a suburb of Luzern, completed the filming. The microfilms are available for use at HMML.

The staff at HMML are currently creating a searchable database of catalog records for HMML's microfilmed manuscripts. Until this is complete, for more information about Sarnen's manuscripts please contact the curator.