The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at Penn brings manuscript culture, modern technology and people together.

Tag Archives: manuscripts


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Adding to the story of Ms. Codex 615

Admont shelfmark

Last week we were delighted to receive an email from Dr. Christoph Egger of the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung about Ms. Codex 615, a fourteenth-century manuscript from Bohemia of Alain de Lille’s De planctu naturae.  Penn purchased this manuscript from Philadelphia bookdealer William H. Allen in 1951, but we knew nothing about its journeys before that.  Thanks to our digital facsimile available online, Dr. Egger identified Ms. Codex 615 as formerly MS 478 in the library of Stift Admont, the Benedictine monastery in the town of Admont, in central Austria.  The monastery’s library still owns more than 1,400 manuscripts.  Our manuscript has the Admont shelfmark on a label on its spine, shown here, and is described in a catalog of the monastery’s manuscripts, itself a manuscript compiled by Jakob Wichner in 1888, which is also fully available online thanks to manuscripta.at.  The entry for MS 478 has a note added in pencil recording the sale of this manuscript in 1938 to Brecher, who, according to Dr. Egger, was an antiquarian bookdealer in Brno.  For the source of this excellent information, details on more manuscripts from Admont now in other libraries, and a reunion of Ms. Codex 615 with some of its old friends, please see Dr. Egger’s post, “olim Admont,” on the Iter Austriacum blog.


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Manuscripts Summer Course 2018

LJS 101, f. 1v

We’re looking forward to the fourth annual offering of the SIMS manuscript skills summer course!  Aimed at graduate students in medieval and Renaissance studies who want to use manuscripts in their research, the course gives students a hands-on introduction to handling, reading, and studying European manuscripts up to the 16th century, as well as to digital humanities projects built on manuscript images.  Students are paired with manuscripts from the Penn collection in their areas of interest to give them an opportunity to apply the content of the course and become the local experts in “their” manuscripts.  The class sessions, which run from 10 am to noon on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from May 22 to June 27, include lectures, exercises, and time for independent study of students’ manuscripts.  The course is free, not for credit, and open to graduate students from any institution.  Penn students may register through the Graduate Division of Arts and Sciences here through March 29; students from other institutions should send an email about interest, languages, and paleography experience to Amey Hutchins (ameyh@upenn.edu).


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A Legacy Inscribed: the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts

The exhibition A Legacy Inscribed: The Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts is now available online. The original exhibition was curated by Lynn Ransom and took place March 1 – August 16, 2013 in the Penn Library’s Goldstein Family Gallery, located in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

In 2011, University of Pennsylvania Board members Barbara Brizdle Schoenberg and LawrenceJ. Schoenberg (C53, WG56) donated the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of Manuscripts to the libraries. The Schoenberg collection brings together many of the great scientific and philosophical traditions of the ancient and medieval worlds. Documenting the extraordinary achievements of scholars, philosophers, and scientists in Europe, Africa and Asia, the collection illuminates the foundations of Penn’s academic traditions.

Each section of the exhibition – Arts and Sciences, Communication, Design, Education, Engineering, Law, the Medical Arts, and Social Policy and Practice – showcases texts, textbooks, documents, and letters that embody the history and mission of the schools that form the University. Often illustrated with complex diagrams and stunning imagery, the manuscripts bring to the present the intellectual legacy of the distant past.