| Description | Late 14th century manuscript volume: Benediktinerregel (Rule of St Benedict), divided into 73 chapters (numbered in error as 72), each chapter consisting of a passage in Latin followed by the German translation. There are some ink sketches of monks (ff 6r, 37v, 38r, 82v) and one sketch of an abbot standing before a table (f 71r). The front cover bears a strip of parchment with the inscription: 'Regula Benedictj / Jn Theutunice'. The volume also contains a list of monastic orders with descriptions of the characteristic dress of each order (ff 94r-94v); the text of regulations, in Latin, containing many quotations from the Latin Rule (f 95r-97ra); and the later inscription 'Jste liber p[er]tinet ad mo[na]ste[r]iu[m] ot[e]nbure[n] (this book belongs to the monastery of Ottobeuren) (f 104r).
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Bound in original oak boards, rounded at the edges and covered with cream leather. There were 5 metal bosses on each of the front and back boards, 4 remain on the front and 3 on the back. The spine covering is split where it joins the front board, pieces of manuscript fragment waste can be seen in the spine lining. |
| AdminHistory | The Order of Saint Benedict comprises the confederated congregations of monks and lay brothers who follow the rule of life of St Benedict (c480-c547), written c535-540 with St Benedict's own abbey of Montecassino in mind. The rule, providing a complete directory for the government and spiritual and material well-being of a monastery, spread slowly in Italy and Gaul. By the late Middle Ages the Benedictine Rule had been translated into many languages owing to the diffusion of the order through many European countries.
The large abbey at Ottobeuren, near Memmingen, Bavaria, was founded in 764 and was among the most important early Benedictine monasteries, famous in the Middle Ages for its large library. |
| CustodialHistory | The manuscript belonged to the Benedictine Abbey at Ottobeuren, Bavaria, and may subsequently have been at Bern (Berne), Switzerland. It later belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), baronet, an antiquary and bibliophile whose collection included c60,000 manuscripts of various kinds, some relating to the administration of Swiss towns. Various manuscripts were sold after Sir Thomas's death, some to the German government, and were dispersed to several libraries. Formerly Phillipps MS 1244, bearing on folio 97r the Phillipps ex libris. |
| PublnNote | The manuscript has been published as The London Benedictine Rule: an unpublished middle high German manuscript of the late fourteenth century, edited, with an introduction, by Carl Selmer (Studien und Mitteilungen sur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und Seiner Zweige, Heruasgegeben von der Bayerischen Benediktinerakademie 11: Ergänzungsheft, Munchen, 1936). See also Franz Simmler, 'Makrostrukturen in Lateinischen und Deuteschen Textüberlieferungen der Regula Benedicti', Sonderdruck aus Regulae Benedicti Studia Annuarium Internationale (1988). Copies of each at University College London Special Collections.
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