Apparatus Diplomaticus

The Apparatus Diplomaticus is an academic institution within the Faculty of Philosophy. It comprises an unparalleled collection of well over a thousand documentary records from Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern Period, written in a variety of languages, especially ancient and non-European ones (including Latin, Middle High German, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Tamil, and Sinhalese). Already during the university’s founding period, a didactically oriented “Diplomatic Cabinet” existed, which since 1759 served the study of diplomatics – the discipline concerned with the analysis and interpretation of charters and documents – and also housed manuscripts, seals, and copperplate reproductions. Even today, the Apparatus, established in 1802, primarily consists of papal, imperial, royal, as well as ecclesiastical, dynastic, municipal, and private civic charters.