Friday, July 20, 2012

UB Heidelberg Cod. Sal. VIII,71

One of the Codices Salemitani digitized by the UB Heidelberg, Cod. Sal. VIII,71, is described as a collection of prophecies from the second half of the sixteenth century. A quick search doesn't turn up any additional information on it, so I don't know if the manuscript has been extensively described anywhere. A quick look at the contents suggests that it consists of two parts: First, excerpts of prophecies attributed to Hildegard, Joachim, and Johannes Tauler; and second, the Zwölf Sibyllen Weissagungen, a collection that accreted around the prophecies of the twelve sibyls in the first half of the sixteenth century, principally issued from the press of Christian Egenolff in Frankfurt. By the 1530s it contained a thirteenth sibyl, extracts from the Extracts of Various Prophecies and Josephus, an Antichrist text, and the 36 signs of the last day. Eventually Egenolff would add the Prognostication for 24 Years of Paracelsus and the Prognosticatio of Johannes Lichtenberger.

The second part of the Heidelberg manuscript follows the selection of texts found in an edition of the Zwölf Sibyllen Weissagung printed in 1575 in Nuremberg by Valentin Furhmann (VD16 Z 949). However, Cod. Sal. VIII,71 includes the colophon of a different edition on its last leaf verso: Getruckt zu Rottenburg ob der Tauber, bey Hieronymo Körnlein. Hieronymus Körnlein appears as the printer of 59 editions in VD 17, mostly between 1615 and 1632. An edition of the Zwölf Sibyllen Weissagung or a similar prophetic collection doesn't appear among them, however, so this might be a manuscript witness to an otherwise unknown edition of the work from ca. 1615-30 from the press of Hieronymus Körnlein.

At first glance, it appears that the manuscript copyist rather than Körnlein was the one who expanded the collection by adding the prophecies of Joachim and Hildegard at the beginning. The first leaf recto includes the note: Durch ein Güethertzige vnd wohlmeinende Ordens Persohn aus Vnderschidlichen alten approbierten Büchern summarische weiß zusamen getragen.

Friday, July 6, 2012

RSS feeds for early modern German printing

While digitalization projects are wonderful things, you also need a way to keep up with the items that are digitized after you search through the collection. The most convenient way I know to do this is through RSS feeds. I use Thunderbird as an RSS reader, so I can see what's been digitized when I check my e-mail each morning. It's especially useful if the RSS feeds are limited to specific collections or centuries, rather than including everything that a library has digitized.

After looking at all the German libraries in Klaus Graf's master list, my newly expanded list of RSS feeds includes the following:

SBPK Berlin, historische Drucke: http://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/dms/rss/historische-drucke/
BSB München: http://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/mdz/rss/mdz-rss.xml
e.rara-ch: http://www.e-rara.ch/rss
Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: http://dbs.hab.de/rss
Universität Augsburg: http://bvbm1.bib-bvb.de/rssfeeds/ubadtl.xml
Universität Darmstadt, Inkunabeln: http://tudigit.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/show/rss?modus=incl&sammlung=21

Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf: http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/rss
Universität Halle, Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts: http://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/vd16/rss/
Universität Heidelberg, Druckschriften: http://diglit.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/rss?set=druckschriften
Universität Heidelberg, Handschriften: http://diglit.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/rss?set=handschriften
Universität München: http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/cgi/exportview/malte/malte16/RSS2/malte16.xml

UPDATE: A welcome addition, thanks to Stefan Heßbrüggen:
SLUB Dresden: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/rss/