Chrysostomus Hanthaler

Chrysostomus Hanthaler (b. Ried, Upper Austria, 14 February 1690; d. in the Cistercian monastery of Lilienfeld in Lower Austria, 2 September 1754) was a Cistercian historian and numismatist.

Biography

Having finished his theological studies in Salzburg, he made his profession in 1716 and subsequently devoted himself to historical research.

He was part of the renewal in monastic scholarship initiated by the French Maurists. Closer to home, it was Bernard Pez in Melk and Gottfried Bessel in Göttweig who inspired Hanthaler. The archives and rich library in Lilienfeld offered a useful field for his activity.

Works

On becoming librarian, Hanthaler made it his first task to compile a reliable catalogue and then collected all documents bearing on the history of Lilienfeld and of Austria. Copies and impressions of memorial tablets, seals, and coins were reproduced until his transcripts and compilations filled twenty-two folio volumes. From this matter he composed the in two large volumes (Linz, 1747–1754): this monumental work was a history of Lilienfeld from the thirteenth century to the end of the Middle Ages, a history of the Babenberg dynasty, and also of the Steyer region. His death delayed the completion of his great compilation project. On the suppression of the monastery in 1789, the manuscript was brought to the Imperial Library at Vienna, but the copper plates and prints were sold. Subsequently both came into the hands of Abbot Ladislaus Pyrker, who published the last two volumes under the title of (Vienna, 1819–20), together with two appendices containing descriptions of the tombstones and extracts from the necrology of the monastery.

Hanthaler left behind numerous other writings. These included: (Linz, 1744) a memorandum book (Nuremberg and Vienna, 1753), an introductory manual on numismatics for amateur collectors

Four chronicles of the Babenbergs, which Hanthaler listed in his in ancient sources, were in fact his own work. These were:

of the Dominican Pernold