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Manuscripts from Freising

The fund of manuscripts from the diocesan town of Freising near Munich is one of the core holdings of the Bavarian State Library's manuscript collection, due to its age and its importance in the intellectual history of Bavaria. The beginnings of the Freising Cathedral Library and the local scriptorium date back to the 8th century. In the aftermath of the secularization of 1802/03, about 400 medieval (Latin and German) manuscripts were transferred to the Munich Court Library. The core of this collection is formed by the manuscripts formerly owned by the library of Freising Cathedral, which had grown over more than 1,000 years and is preserved largely intact. Today, there are 366 codices from the Cathedral Library among the Codices latini monacenses (Clm), today listed under the shelfmarks 6201-6787. In addition, nine manuscripts from other religious institutions in Freising (Clm 6801-6832 from the Franciscan friary, Collegiate church of St. Andrä and the Premonstratensian monastery of St. Peter and Paul in Neustift near Freising). 28 additional manuscripts are listed under different shelfmarks in the so-called Latin 'Supplement' (Clm 23001 ff.: 'Codices diversae originis'), for these a Freising provenance could only be established after the reorganization of the Latin manuscripts in the 1830s. The collection is particularly rich in early medieval codices: About half of the 229 parchment manuscripts date from the Carolingian era, another quarter from the Ottonian age. The younger part of the fund is dominated by paper manuscripts from the late 14th and 15th centuries: 136 codices date from this period.

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