lex salica – Bibliotheca legum

The Bl is growing: two new discoveries and one refinement

By Daniela Schulz | 2025-12-18

Thanks to information provided by Prof. Dr. Matthias M. Tischler (ICREA), we have now been able to add the exact shelfmark to Vic, Arxiu i Biblioteca Episcopal, dipòsit MSG, s.n., which is now “Vic, Arxiu i Biblioteca Episcopal, Fragm. XXVII/48”.

We are grateful to Dr Roman Deutinger (BAdW) for pointing out a Lex Visigothorum manuscript previously unknown to us in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska Krakow with the shelfmark “Przyb. 50/60”. A digital copy is available from the SLUB Dresden.

Through research in the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, we were able to find a 15th-century paper manuscript containing, among other things, the Lex Salica, various capitularies and the Septinas septem. It belongs to the collection of the Bibliothèque de l’Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and bears the shelfmark “Ms. Mas 31” (SDBM_281164). Digital images of the manuscript are available at ARCA (IRHT Digital Library), and an automatically generated transcription is provided by CoMMA.

Descriptions of the two ‘new additions’ will be added to Bibliotheca legum in the near future.

Until then, the Bibliotheca legum team wishes everyone a restful Christmas and a good start to 2026.

New textual witnesses found by R. Deutinger

By Daniela Schulz | 2019-03-11

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.

Ad fontes – Lex Salica codices of Bamberg State Library

By Daniela Schulz | 2013-09-28

During a field trip to southern German libraries, the three Lex Salica manuscripts Can. 12, Jur. 35 and (ad) Bibl. 30c of Bamberg State Library were subject to a thorough examination.

We were successfull in reconstructing some etched part of the Salic Law in codex Jur. 35 (foll. 5r and 5v). The order of the etched titles (in comparison to the relevant edition by Eckhardt) is as follows:

5r
2,12
2,13
2,14
2,15
2,16
2,17

5v
2,10

Codex Can. 12 also carries an etched part after the XX. title of Hincmar of Reims. Although it was not possible to identify the erased text, it can be said with some certainty that it is not the title following in the MGH edition).

New codices (re-)discovered

By Dominik | 2013-06-13

During our research for the Bibliotheca legum we were able to detect a fragment of the Lex Salica in the State Library of Bamberg, which has not been acknowledged so far. Additionally, also a previously unnoticed capitulary was found in the manuscript Berlin, Staatsbibliothek – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Savigny 1. It was even not covered by Mordek in his Bibliotheca (1995).