At 270,000 manuscripts, the library of Klosterneuburg Monastery is home not only to century-old knowledge but to a number of hidden treasures as well. In a joint research project, a team of medievalists in collaboration with researchers from the St. Pölten UAS have now taken it upon themselves to explore this cultural heritage of Lower Austria.

The researchers and library staff are planning to trace the history of the medieval texts of Klosterneuburg Monastery because while the monasteries of Lower Austria have vast collections of medieval manuscripts, there are no indications as to how many scribes worked at a monastery and whether these moved between monasteries. The objective of the project starting in March 2020 is to use Artificial Intelligence to shine a light on this mystery.  

Within the framework of the traditional opening of the Lower Austrian state holiday last week, State Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner and Provost Bernhard Backovsky publicly introduced the project together with the heads of the latter.

Recognising Individual Writing Patterns

The digitalisation of approximately 100,000 pages of medieval handwriting forms the basis of this new research project which will now examine 40,000 of them more closely. The researchers are planning to use Artificial Intelligence to automatically detect writing patterns from the digitised handwritings of the monastery’s writing workshop: the scriptorium. Apart from the analysis of historical documents, such methods are also used for other purposes such as solving crimes. Writers from times long past can be identified, thus allowing conclusions to be drawn regarding the working methods in the scriptoriums.
The interdisciplinary team breaks new ground with this project and intends to provide insights into medieval ways of thinking and acting, thus making the knowledge transfer in the Middle Ages in our region transparent.

The project “Scriptorium Research in 12th Century Lower Austria” is subsidised with approximately 200,000 EUR by the Federal State of Lower Austria within the framework of the FTI programme.

Press release of Klosterneuburg Monastery on this topic (in German)

Project webpage