After a good 400 years: A manuscript from the 15th century has turned out to be a lost codex from the Bibliotheca Palatina – the most important German library of the Renaissance. The medieval manuscript contains legal treatises on, among other things, the relationship between emperor and pope, but was lost during the Thirty Years’ War. In 1937 the codex was purchased by the Heidelberg University Library, but only now have researchers proven the connection to the Bibliotheca Palatina.
The origins of the Bibliotheca Palatina, the Palatinate State Library, date back to 1386. At that time, manuscripts from the newly founded University of Heidelberg were collected in libraries for the first time. Later, writings from the monastery library of the Church of the Holy Spirit and the Electors’ collection from Heidelberg Castle were also added. By the Renaissance, the Bibliotheca Palatina had developed into one of the most renowned book collections in Germany. But that ended in 1622 with the Thirty Years’ War, when the Catholic League conquered the city and the books were taken to the Vatican as spoils of war.
To this day, a large part of the Bibliotheca Palatina lies in the Vatican; only the German-language manuscripts of this historical collection were returned to Heidelberg in the 19th century. They are stored in the university library and are gradually being digitized.
Treatise on the dispute between Emperor and Pope
In the course of this work, Karin Zimmermann, head of the Historical Collections department, has now discovered a medieval manuscript that originally came from the Bibliotheca Palatina. The codex from the 15th century was purchased from an antiquarian bookstore in 1937. Only Zimmermann’s research revealed that it was a manuscript from the Palatinate State Library that was believed to be lost. This is revealed, among other things, by the preciously designed cover of the codex, which goes back to the Elector Ottheinrich, who resided in Heidelberg in the 16th century – an indication that the manuscript was part of the Bibliotheca Palatina at the time.
“The manuscript was probably written in Konstanz and Basel for a certain Johannes Zeller, who held several offices in the dioceses and monasteries there in the 15th century,” explains Thorsten Huthwelker from the historical collections of the University of Heidelberg. One of the texts in the codex is the “Tractatus de iuribus regni et imperii Romanorum” by the legal scholar Lupold von Bebenburg, written between 1338 and 1340. This deals with legal aspects of the disputes between the emperor and the pope. As Huthwelker explains, this treatise takes the position that the elected Roman king has full power over the kingdom and empire even without papal confirmation. The Code is supplemented by other texts of constitutional significance.
Winding paths of the Codex reconstructed
Unlike most other manuscripts from the Bibliotheca Palatina, this codex apparently did not reach the Vatican after the Thirty Years’ War. In the inventory there from 1798, this manuscript is listed as missing, as the researchers report. According to her research, the manuscript only resurfaced in the late 18th century in the book collection of the English aristocrat Frederick North. After several further stops, the painter Wilhelm Trübner from Heidelberg acquired the codex at the beginning of the 20th century. From his estate, the manuscript came into the possession of a Munich antiquarian bookshop, which sold the manuscript to the Heidelberg University Library in 1937.
The recovered codex has now received the library signature “Cod. Pal. lat. 778” and is therefore officially part of the Bibliotheca Palatina again after centuries. In addition, the manuscript was digitized and integrated into the “Bibliotheca Palatina – digital” portal, which virtually brings together the holdings from Rome and Heidelberg.
Source: Heidelberg University