Scholars’ manuscripts

Fascinating documents of the time

The Claustroneuburgensis 125 codex was compiled in the late 1430s and includes biological texts based on works from the 13th century as well as the 12 signs of the zodiac and 36 constellations. Objects, animals and mythological creatures, which populated the cosmos according to ancient traditions, are represented.

Related motifs can be found in an astronomical composite manuscript kept at the Austrian National Library. The text was copied in 1435 from Reinhardus Gensfelder de Nurenberga, a well-known geographer and astronomer, very probably in Vienna.

Both the manuscript at the Austrian National Library and our Klosterneuburg codex belong to the scripts compiled by the ‘First Viennese Astronomical and Mathematical School’ in Vienna and Klosterneuburg, initiated by the humanist Johannes von Gmunden and Provost Georg Muestinger.

Ptolemy’s ‘Almagest’ is a further astronomical manuscript from the library of Provost Georg Muestinger on show at the exhibition. Muestinger was furthermore one of the first to commission a map of the world, a unique detail of which being that the prime meridian runs through Klosterneuburg!