Research

During the turmoils of war in the 17th century little was recorded about the Cathedral Library; its books were hidden from plundering troops in the Thirty Years‘ War and fell into oblivion. It was in the year 1717 when the collection was spectacularly rediscovered by the vicar capitular Christoph Franz von Hutten, later bishop of Wuerzburg 1724-1729. This „rediscovery“ marks a starting point in the history of researching and indexing Cathedral Library manuscripts. In the 18th century it were the university librarians Georg Konrad Siegler and Johann Georg von Eckhart who prepared the Cathedral Library’s first manuscript catalogue. In the 19th century Joseph Anton Oegg and Anton Ruland continued and broadened research in the collection’s manuscripts.

The Cathedral Library attracted special academic attention in the second part of the 20th century. Within a short period of time several fundamental studies were released: In 1952, when the 1200th recurrence of the day the Franconian Apostles’ mortal remains were raised to the honour of the altars, was celebrated, Bernhard Bischoff and Josef Hoffmann published their work “Libri Sancti Kyliani”, shedding more light on the palaeographical developments within the Franconian scriptoria of the 8th and 9th centuries. And when in 1972 a new volume in the series “Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge” (MBK, ‘medieval manuscript catalogues ‘) was put out, Hermann Knaus included a chapter about the Cathedral Library. As a reference and a benchmark for all catalogue work on the Library’s holdings emerged the detailed manuscript catalogues of Hans Thurn (1981/1984). The project Libri Sancti Kiliani Digital has carried forward Hans Thurn’s achievements by correcting, updating and supplementing his findings.