Virtual Lorsch Monastery Library Bibliotheca Laureshamensis – digital

The aim of the project was to virtually recreate the library of Lorsch Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and thus make the intellectual foundations of the monastery and the world view of the Carolingian period visible and researchable.

Hardly any other library of the early Middle Ages that can still be reconstructed today has achieved such a synthesis as Lorsch Abbey. It was one of the centres in which the legacy of antiquity was secured and increasingly transformed through copies, commentaries and further processing, despite all later disruptions. An immense transfer of knowledge, above all from the Mediterranean region, but also from the Irish and Anglo-Saxon monasteries, was carried out in Lorsch for Carolingian and medieval culture and disseminated as one of the foundations of science, literature, art and the book trade of the Middle Ages. The Lorsch library was still of such interest to the humanists that the collection became the core of Ottheinrich's library, the Bibliotheca Palatina in Heidelberg, and contributed to its fame. It is above all thanks to the palaeographical studies of Bernhard Bischoff and Hartmut Hoffmann that we know so much about the Lorsch codices, which are now scattered all over the world.

Despite their importance for medieval knowledge, writing and monastic culture, only a few images of the manuscripts, which are now scattered across 73 libraries worldwide, were available at the start of the project, so the fact that the manuscripts can be retrieved and checked in the form of digital copies represents significant progress. In addition, the library was catalogued in the form of a manuscript census and made searchable via a database. By linking the catalogue data with the digital facsimiles, this unique collection is now accessible for further academic processing and research interests in a wide range of disciplines.