About this website

e-chartae
the virtual charters archive

As part of the preparations for the new exhibition space of the Stiftsarchiv St.Gallen, the archivists also developed the e-chartae digitisation project in 2018. The aim of e-chartae is to make all early medieval charters of the Abbey Archives freely accessible on the Internet. This means that the only originally preserved monastery archive of the Merovingian and Carolingian periods is now completely available online. More than 1000 places in the Lake Constance region and beyond are given access to their first documentary mentions and thus often the evidence of an early phase of settlement with the first inhabitants known by name.

The early medieval documents of the monastery archives are reproduced in high resolution so that details such as shaving or ink changes are easily recognizable. Additional information on the individual documents is managed in a database. This has created a working instrument for international document research that can be continuously improved and expanded. In the medium term, the full texts of the documents including translations into German, French and English will be available. We are very grateful for any corrections, references or translations of the texts of documents.