Several scholars have studied the Rooklooster Register, but their plans to edit and publish the manuscript have never been carried through.
The first researcher whose attention was drawn to the manuscript was Theodor Gottlieb (†1929), librarian of the Imperial and Royal Court Library of Vienna. Apparently he was planning a study or publication on the subject, and as a consequence he was unwilling to grant foreign colleagues access to the manuscript. In any case his research notes seem to have been lost.
Nevertheless it was C.G.N. De Vooys (†1955), professor of Dutch Linguistics and Literature at the Rijksuniversiteit in Utrecht (Netherlands), who rediscovered the Rooklooster Register. In 1897 he excerpted some notes from the manuscript, e.g. on the works of the mystic Hadewijch, to provide them to Willem De Vreese (†1938), his colleague of Gent. The latter's visit to the imperial Familien Fidei-Kommissbibliothek in 1907, to consult the Rooklooster Register, came to naught. He was told, contrary to agreement and in spite of his indignation, that the manuscript had been requested by the Hofbibliothek. Rather irritated over this unfortunate event, he voiced his opinion that access to manuscripts that had been wrongfully taken from "Belgian" monasteries, was withheld from a "Belgian" scholar. In 1913 the jesuit and historian of Dutch literature Jozef van Mierlo (†1958), one of the pioneers of the Ruusbroecgenootschap in Antwerp, also ventured upon consulting the manuscript. Gottlieb, however, only allowed him a glimpse of the Hadewijch items in the register. In the mean time, Paul Lehmann (†1964), a Latinist from Munich who initiated the publication of German and Swiss medieval library catalogues, had announced the preparation of the publication of the manuscript in a few articles in 1920 and 1937.

C.G.N. De Vooys

Willem De Vreese

Paul Lehmann

Jozef Van Mierlo

Jozef-Maria De Smet

In the following decades, the Rooklooster Register would increasingly attract attention in Belgium. A few years after his attempt to study the manuscript in Vienna, Van Mierlo managed to obtain it in loan in order to photograph the entire manuscript. As a result, the part containing the anonymous works in the illustrious book register were published in 1930. At the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven the interest was also lively: the church historian and canon Jozef-Maria De Smet (†1996) had the Rooklooster Register at his disposal in Leuven between 1949 and 1954. He was to lead an effort to study the manuscript with the intention of publishing it. Finally, two staff members of the Ruusbroecgenootschap, the jesuit Paul Verdeyen and the academic librarian Frans Hendrickx, after a visit to Vienna in 1978 again attempted to resume the earlier study of the manuscript at the Ruusbroecgenootschap. Lacking structural support for their plans, their effort also failed.
P.F.J. Obbema (†2015), who was curator of Western manuscripts at the University Library of Leiden, attempted to edit the Rooklooster Register in a "light" version. Since many titles and biographical notes in the manuscript have been copied from Joannes Trithemius’ Liber de scriptoribis ecclesiasticis Obbema decided to leave out parts of the copied entries, specifically those that are not referring to a library. Furthermore, some printed editions are included in the Rooklooster Register, because at the time of the compilation of the manuscript the art of printing was already in full expansion. Those prints were also left out by Obbema, because they no longer represent unique items in the monastic libraries. Obbema was specifically referring to prints that were present in the Rooklooster and Groenendaal libraries at the time of the compilation of the Rooklooster Register. An exception was made for printed works of which a handwritten copy was registered in the Register of Sint-Maarten. In doing so, the edition of the Rooklooster Register could be reduced in size by almost sixty to seventy percent. In addition to transcribing a reduced set of items from the manuscript, Obbema was also taking on the daunting task of adding bibliographical notes for the remaining entries in his edition.

Basic Literature

Apart from the two most recent articles by Pieter Obbema, digitally available on this website (see below), we here provide a bibliographical list of studies, although restricted to those that treat the Rooklooster Register more or less in its entirety. Reports of research into individual authors and their works or the book possession of individual monastic libraries based on the Rooklooster Register have been left out. In our opinion the latter would fit better in a study of the reception of the manuscript in the history of religious literature and monastic history. The following bibliographical list is ordered chronologically.

Frans Hendrickx