D5.2a Delivery of the online materials

The Mainz' Carmelite library. Spotlight on a reconstructed knowledge space

Training in use and study of special documents

Annelen Ottermann reconstructed and analysed the former Mainz Carmelite library in order to rediscover the collection's physiognomy of a dissolved library, which was not in existence for 200 years, as a source of interdisciplinary research, and to get an idea of the intellectual and spiritual knowledge of a monastic library. At present 1595 copies are known with the provenance „Mainz Carmelites“; among them are 39 manuscripts, 289 incunabula, and 1267 prints from the 16th– 18th centuries up to the closure of the convent as a result of secularisation in 1802.  
The text explains the methods and results of this study of provenance research, based on both personal as well as institutional ownership; gives information on the circulation, acquisition and handling of the material in and outside monastic life; and shows how monastic censorship worked.  
It offers background information for those scholars who want to learn about provenance research, the monastic usage of books, and library reconstruction.