Within the micro-exhibit ‘The exponent of the month’, The National Museum of Romanian History (MNIR) displays, starting Wednesday, 13 November, a masterpiece – ‘Codex Altemberger’, ‘the remarkable medieval manuscript of Transylvanian Saxons from Sibiu’.
General Manager of the MNIR, Dr. Ernest Oberlander-Târnoveanu, stated the Codex represents ‘an outstanding piece, an exquisite juridical manuscript’, that belonged to one of the very influential political leaders of the town, Thomas Altemberger. The manuscript contains on its last page the oath those elected in the city council would have to take.
‘The National History Museum is proud to have this manuscript; it’s an open institution where pages in the history of minorities set their place in the history of Romania. It was a legal instrument, and Sibiu was governed until the 18th century’, said Târnoveanu.
MNIR received the manuscript in 1970 as a third holder, as it was once owned by Baron von Brukenthal and by the Museum of Sibiu.
The museum manager insists on performing an anastatic edition (which reproduces a printed matter by presswork or by etching), of the Codex, ‘unique in Europe, unique in the wide world’, so that the document should gain its importance not only for the history of the Transylvanian Saxons but for all the European communities.
Codex Altemberger is one of the first legal works in the Romanian medieval space, a compilation of municipal laws, and put together by German laws.
The Italian and German tradition (13th and 14th century) inspired the copyist of the manuscript who probably has completed it in the 15th century. The year 1481 marks another national first in Sibiu: the first code of urban laws on Romanian territory, Codex Altemberger, written by Mayor Thomas Altemberger.
According to MNIR, Codex is ‘unique in Romania’ written in ‘Gothica libraria’ on parchment and patterned with miniatures.
The expo will be opened to the public until 14 December.