We are delighted to inform you, that the Bibliotheca legum website has been officially approved for inclusion in the Medieval Academy of America’s Database of Medieval Digital Resources (MDR), because it meets or exceeds their standards for digital best-practices. We would like to thank the curators of the MDR for including our manuscript database and also all our users for their support.
In the new issue of the Deutsches Archiv (74/1, 2018, pp. 177-191) Roman Deutinger has drawn attention to a hitherto unknown textual witnesses of Leges texts. Deutinger discovered transcriptions of the Lex Baiuvariorum, the Lex Salica and the Lex Francorum Chamavorum in the collections of the scholar Wolfgang Hunger (1511-1555). Especially the transmission of the Lex Francorum Chamavorum is a great asset, since only three manuscripts of this Lex were known so far.
Due to a scheduled maintenance, the Bl website might be down for some time on wednesday (28th) morning (10 am MEZ). We hope that the impairment won’t last for a long time.
As obvious for the recurrent user of the Bibliotheca legum, the previously announced “facelift work” has already begun. We just started updating the English site. As soon as the work is finished there and all functionalities have been restored, the German-speaking site will follow.
Besides constantly working on improving the website, the Bibliotheca legum staff will present the project as part of the poster exhibition of the annual conference of the “Netzwerk Historische Grundwissenschaften” (NHG, “Network Historical Auxiliary Sciences”) that takes place at the LMU Munich (Feb 15/16), together with some of the qualification and dissertation projects that have emerged from the project so far. Dominik Trump, M.A. will talk about marginalia and glosses in some Epitome Aegidii manuscripts (“In margine – Benutzerspuren in Handschriften der Epitome Aegidii“). Daniela Schulz will trace back the history of Cod. Guelf. 97 Weiss., applying digital methods (“Der Baustein, den die Bauleute verworfen haben? Auf den Spuren des Cod. Guelf. 97 Weiss.”). The program can be found here.
After the Bibliotheca legum has commemorated its 5th anniversary rather quietly in 2017, this milestone is now also to be celebrated externally with a “facelift” in the new year. The look of the site will change over the next few weeks or months; it will become more sophisticated and modern. Since these revisions take some time, it can happen that the site is not available at short notice or not all functionalities are available. We endeavour to keep these restrictions as low as possible and also to inform you about the progress.
Recently, an essay has also been written which reflects on the genesis of the database and its further development. This will hopefully be published in the “Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften” (ZfdG) in the near future.
Keeping up to date with the recent publication of relevant literature and especially of new digital images made available by the various libraries is not an easy task – especially when working not exclusively on one project. We are therefore most grateful for scholars informing us about such things and/or providing corrections or more precise information on manuscripts etc. In addition to direct interactions, social media plattforms such as Twitter have proven to be useful resources within the last few years. A lot of scientific blog posts feature there, that often also provoke fruitful discussions.
Among many other resources, one blog we frequently rely on is Jean-Baptiste Piggin’s “Macro-Typography”-blog. Here, he provides lists of the latest DigiVatLib digitizations as well as interesting observations on the manuscripts. Thom Gobbitt’s “early medieval laws and law-books“-Blog offers interesting insights about legal manuscripts with a special focus on the leges Langobardorum. And of course, there is always an active exchange between the Bibliotheca legum the capitularies project (Capitularia. Edition of the Frankish capitularies), which is also led by Karl Ubl.
In the current issue (133) of the Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte (Romanistische Abteilung) our staff member Dominik Trump, M.A. published an essay on the Epitome Aegidii excerpt of the Milanese Codex A. 46 inf.
In addition to a detailed description and classification of the Roman Law excerpt, the essay also contains an edition of the same.
Further information and references can be found on the ZRG-Website of the Böhlau publishing house.
Konrad Peutinger had in his library a copy of a no longer existing Lex Baiuvariorum manuscript. In the recently published catalog for the exhibition “Gesammeltes Gedächtnis. Konrad Peutinger und die kulturelle Überlieferung im 16. Jahrhundert” (Collected memory . Konrad Peutinger and the cultural tradition in the 16th century), ed . Reinhard Laube and Helmut Zäh, Veronika Lukas mentions this codex, which today is 2° Cod August 389 in the Augsburg State and City Library. It has now also been added to the Biblioteca as the 50th Lex Baiuvariorum (and overall 321st) manuscript.
