The Halberstadt LO represents a unique source that can only be rendered accessible by taking an interdisciplinary and meta-disciplinary approach. Undertaking this kind of analysis by publishing the work with a detailed commentary also facilitates a synthesis of a specific living community’s art, history and culture that goes beyond the book’s liturgical content.
The fact that numerous liturgical manuscripts from Halberstadt have come down to us is particularly advantageous for this project.
Another unique holding that is still kept in Halberstadt today is the large and varied church treasury. The LO is an outstanding instrument for determining the function and liturgical use (i.e. exhibition, placing, donation and processions) of the objects in the cathedral’s treasury and situate them both historically and topographically with a degree of detail that cannot be achieved in any other location.
The digital edition offers an extraordinary amount of added value thanks to its links with other relevant digital sources (liturgical texts and books, sacred places and objects). In this way, a superlative document of Church history in northern Germany can be made available to researchers in its entirety for the first time.
Cooperation partners:
The project is a cooperative undertaking together with Kulturstiftung Sachsen-Anhalt and Professor Outi Merisalo, University of Jyväskylä (Finland).
Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) – Temporary position
Duration: 1 March 2025 – 29 February 2028
Project participants: Dr Patrizia Carmassi (specialist), Jacob Möhrke (DH employee)
Title image: Halberstadt, Historisches Stadtarchiv, M 116, Lectionarium et homiliarium officii (Pars aestivalis), fol. 89r.
Images: The contents of both volumes shown here, written in 1434 and 1437 at the behest of Johannes von Hoym, bishop of Halberstadt, reflects the liturgy as celebrated in Halberstadt. Some detailed rubrics even correspond to the instructions in the Liber ordinarius.
PURL: http://diglib.hab.de/?link=202
