The Saxon Weichbildrecht with gloss Digital edition of the manuscript Staatsbibliothek Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. fol. 389, under the auspices the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH)

• Applicant: Dr. Frank-Michael Kaufmann
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 527296820

The aim of the project is the critical edition of the Weichbildrecht-Vulgata with gloss based on the central manuscript Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Ms. gem. fol. 389, under the auspices of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). In contrast to the Sachsenspiegel-Landrecht and the Sachsenspiegel- Lehnrecht, there is no reliable edition of that third pillar of common Saxon law, the Weichbildrecht, that accords with today's standards. The gloss is especially important, as it constitutes the first effort to link Weichbild law with the other pillars of common Saxon law as well as with Roman and canon law, for application in court. This in turn spurred the reception of the Weichbild law with its glosses in Eastern Europe, where "Saxon- Magdeburg law" became widespread. Due partly to the inadequate number of editions, however, research on the glossed Weichbild law remains inadequate. Within the framework of the project, the Weichbildrecht-Vulgata together with its gloss will be edited according to the quality standards of the MGH on the basis of the good and reliable text in what is probably the best manuscript, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Ms. gem. fol. 389. Thus, this important legal text will become available in a citable form for the first time, as a basis to support for future research. The advantages of a digital edition will furthermore be leveraged, to link the online text, page by page, to the underlying manuscript Staatsbibliothek Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. fol. 389, via the DFG Viewer, to aid the direct inspection of the manuscript. Additionall, the parallel passages in the Sachsenspiegel glosses will be linked more precisely to the corresponding passages in the applicant's editions of the Sachsenspiegel-Landrecht and the Sachsenspiegel-Lehnrecht, which are already available online at the dMGH, so that the coherence and interconnectedness of the three pillars of common Saxon law - Landrecht, Lehnrecht and Weichbildrecht – can be made directly comprehensible and, the three pillars might be brought under a common roof. At the end of the project, all research data will be submitted to the MGH and published on their platform as a digital openaccess offering of the MGH Leges division. Upon completion of the work, the research data will be converted to the TEI XML standard, the machine-readable archival format that is also used in the open-MGH. The TEI-XML data will then be used to create both an online version of the edition (HTML) and a version in human-readable archival format (PDF).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants