The Transmission of the Physiologus in Göttweig. The early Christian doctrine of nature, the Physiologus, is one of the most widely received and handed down texts of the Middle Ages; hardly any other text was translated more frequently. With seven textual witnesses of the Latin version, mostly in the so-called “Dicta version”, the holdings of the Göttweig Abbey Library also share in this tradition. The most prominent among them is undoubtedly the former Cod. 101 from the middle of the 12th century, today New York, Morgan Library, MS M.832. With its splendid illustrations of animals, hybrids and mythical creatures, this manuscript soon gained considerable importance not only within the monastery itself but also far beyond. This becomes particularly clear around the turn of the 15th century, when apparently a particularly large number of scribes in Göttweig took this codex as an occasion for the production of further Physiologus copies. In Stiftsbibliothek Göttweig, Codex Gottwicensis 263 in particular, the image program, as well as the text and the accompanying transmission, are so congruent that one can assume a deliberate attempt at imitation. The many parallels between this manuscript and its original, which was created 250 years earlier, give reason to ask to what extent the concrete holdings of a monastery reflect writing and reception practices within it. - [Abstract]

Language: German