In 2008, a research group began work on FWF Start Project “Monastic Enlightenment
and the Benedictine Republic of Letters” at the History Department of the University of Vienna
and the Austrian Institute of Historical Research. The research design of the project is centered around the learned correspondence of two Benedictine monks from the Lower Austrian abbey of Melk, Bernhard (1683–1735) and Hieronymus Pez (1685–1762). The brothers Pez were among the first scholars in the Catholic South of the Holy Roman Empire to systematically collect and critically publish medieval manuscript sources, including many from monastic libraries which have since been dispersed or lost. Beyond the letters to the brothers Pez, the archives and library of Melk Abbey in Lower Austria contain large quantities of manuscript material left by them, both their own notes and the submissions of their correspondents. This includes, for example, various types of biographical lists, (partial) catalogues of books and manuscripts for numerous libraries, excerpts and transcripts from medieval manuscripts and charters. This material assembles the knowledge possessed by the brothers Pez and by their contemporaries, including much information taken from sources that have since been lost or libraries that are now dispersed. Between 2009 and 2012, the Pez papers were digitized, provided with the necessary metadata and imported into Unidam, a digital asset management system hosted by the University of Vienna. The ca. 50.000 images (1,5 terabyte) represent the content of eleven archive boxes and 58 manuscripts and are accessible on the internet.

The digitized Pez papers and the “traditional” publication of the Pez letters act as complementary sources for each other: the information gathered for the publication of the letters complements the database, which, on the other hand, not rarely provides the only key for a proper understanding of the letters. This illustrates the mutual benefit of traditional and digital approaches to source publications.

Access to the database:

http://www.univie.ac.at/monastische_aufklaerung/en/digital-pez-papers.