Nearly 600 medieval manuscripts from two German monasteries are now available to explore online, following the completion of a six-year digitisation project.
The collections preserve texts ranging from theology and philosophy to law, medicine, history and classical literature.
The University Library of Erlangen-Nürnberg has completed a major project to digitise the surviving medieval manuscripts from the former monasteries of Heilsbronn and Sankt Jobst in Germany.
Supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the six-year project concluded at the end of March 2026. It has made 531 medieval manuscripts from Heilsbronn available digitally, along with all 57 medieval manuscripts from Sankt Jobst, for a total of 588 manuscripts.
The two collections are particularly valuable because the libraries of Heilsbronn and Sankt Jobst are the only monastery libraries from the former Franconian margraviates of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Bayreuth to have survived in almost complete form.
The medieval library of Heilsbronn
Founded in 1132, Heilsbronn was a Cistercian monastery in Franconia that developed into an important religious and intellectual centre. Its surviving manuscript collection reflects centuries of reading, writing and scholarship within the monastery.
The library contains biblical commentaries and liturgical works alongside writings by the Church Fathers, sermons and numerous texts associated with Bernard of Clairvaux.
Other manuscripts deal with philosophy and Scholasticism, Aristotle, canon and secular law, grammar and rhetoric, history, saints’ lives, medicine and the natural sciences. Classical authors are also represented.
Sankt Jobst, a Franciscan monastery near Bayreuth, had a much smaller library. Its surviving medieval collection consists of 57 manuscripts, mostly written on paper.
Their origins reveal connections extending beyond Franconia into Thuringia, Bohemia, Silesia and the wider Saxon Franciscan province.
The digitisation project was completed in three stages, with the final phase beginning in 2023 and concentrating primarily on paper manuscripts.
Alongside producing high-resolution digital images, researchers updated catalogue descriptions and recorded information about the provenance of individual volumes.
The manuscripts can now be explored online through the University Library of Erlangen-Nürnberg’s digital collections, opening these two surviving medieval monastic libraries to researchers and the wider public.