Digitalization of medieval manuscripts from Helmstedt: The collection of Matthias Flacius and other provenances

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The manuscript collection of the former University of Helmstedt (1576–1810), which includes, among others, the Bibliotheca Julia (i.e. the 16th century collection of books and manuscripts of Duke Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg), forms the oldest part of the collection of manuscripts that are currently preserved at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. These so-called Codices Helmstadienses are currently the subject of a cataloging project funded by the DFG (“Katalogisierung der mittelalterlichen Helmstedter Handschriften”), whose results will be published successively online as well as in several printed volumes. As a complementary measure, the project presented here aims to provide a significant part of the collection in digital form, namely the manuscripts from the possession of the Protestant theologian and church historian Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520–1575), the valuable editions of classical authors collected by Duke Julius himself and a number of manuscripts from the collection of the Brunswick city scribe and scholar Gerwin von Hameln (c. 1415–1496). The presentation, which will comply with the latest standards of manuscript cataloging and digitalization, is intended to further stimulate historical research into the collection’s contents, and also in the individual history of single manuscripts. For this purpose, the digital reproductions generated in the project can be freely accessed online via the Herzog August Bibliothek’s manuscript database and reused under a Creative Commons license.