Blog

You are here

19
Jan

Early Printed Books of the National Medical Library in Prague

The National Medical Library in Prague has provided access to five early printed books or their binder’s volumes from its collections. The earliest of them is the collection of German medical texts, printed in Frankfurt am Main around the middle of the 16th century (shelf mark T 452), whereas the other printed books come from the period between the end of the 16th century and the end of the 18th century. Most of the works are German. The Czech ones are represented by Kniha o babském umění [A Textbook of Midwifery] by Raphael Johann Steidele, printed in 1778 (shelf mark T 446).

14
Dec

Manuscripts from the National Library of the Czech Republic

The newly digitized codices of the National Library come from three larger provenance sets: the old collection of the NL, manuscripts from the monastery in Teplá and the former Prague Lobkowicz Library. In terms of content, the group is quite varied, with the predominance of theological, liturgical and homiletic codices, but also some hagiographic, medical, grammatical, philosophical and legal works as well as Biblical manuscripts, in some cases with exegeses. Codices with extant ownership records come from important Czech medieval libraries: besides the colleges of the Prague university, they also comprise volumes from the Augustinian canonries in Roudnice nad Labem and Třeboň as well as the Cistercian monastery in Zlatá Koruna. The earliest digitized codices come from the 12th century, the latest from the beginning of the 16th century. The most frequent language is Latin, but the manuscripts digitised also include an important work of Czech literature, the so-called Manuscript from Hradec Králové, containing hymns and satires (shelf mark XXIII G 92), and among German codices some manuscripts with legal texts (Teplá MS. C 5, Teplá MS. D 13). Works interesting for the history of book painting are e.g. the codice Teplá MS. E 46, made in Magdeburg in 1491, the manuscripts of Czech origin Teplá MS. D 16 (the New Testament with a commentary) and Teplá MS. b 15 (a prayer book), and the Italian manuscript Teplá MS. E 8.

14
Dec

Manuscripts from the Slavonic Library

Eight manuscripts from the collections of the Slavonic Library were digitised in 2017. The earliest of them are the incomplete Sudebnik of Ivan III, a collection of laws of the Russian state (shelf mark B 1), copied around 1560, and a liturgical codex (shelf mark T 4311), made in Ukraine most likely at the end of the 16th century. The other digitised manuscripts come from the 17th and 18th centuries, specifically from the areas of Russia, Ukraine and Croatia.

20
Nov

Medieval Manuscripts from the Museum of the Brno Region

The Museum of the Brno Region digitised five medieval manuscripts coming from the library of the Benedictine Abbey in Rajhrad in 2017. Apart from collections of sermons, written by Andreas de Broda and Albertus de Padua, they include the medical collection R 421 and the codex R 427, containing texts of diverse content, comprising legends, confession works, the treatise De ludo scaccorum by Jacob de Cessolis and others.

Pages