Manuscripts and Printed Books from the Slavonic Library

Three manuscripts from the collections of the Museum and Gallery in Prostějov were digitised in 2024. The oldest of them is the guild book of the fishermen’s guild in Krnov (shelf mark 1651). It began to be written around 1618 and was kept, albeit inconsistently, until 1853. The codex under the shelf mark 1652 contains copies of records of the decisions of the major senate of the court of appeal in 1689, made for Count Ignác Karel of Šternberk. The smallest of the three is a puppet-theatre play from 1787 (shelf mark Br 101), whose author was Josef Jan Šarapatka, a composer active in Žamberk.

The oldest manuscript in the collections of the Library of the Latin School in Jáchymov has been digitised. It is a Hebrew Bible from 1384 (shelf mark LC 202), containing most of the books of the Old Testament. The scribe of the calligraphic manuscript was Eliezer ben Yitzhak. The codex, which was probably written in Southern Germany, was purchased in 1546 or 1547 by the headmaster of the Latin school and pastor in Jáchymov, Johannes Mathesius, who subsequently donated it to the library of the local school.

In 2024, the Museum of the Bohemian Paradise in Turnov provided access to a prayer book from the 18th century (shelf mark R 106). In addition to the usual prayers for Mass, confession and communion, the Czech-language manuscript contains an extensive section devoted to saints. At the beginning, it has an engraving of the miraculous statuette of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Svatá Hora near Příbram.

In 2023, Muzeum Brněnska digitised three more medieval manuscripts from the library of the Benedictine Abbey in Rajhrad. Two volumes (R 352 and R 354) contain parts of the Bible with accompanying texts. The majority of the contents of the codex R 383 consist of works dedicated to Marian devotion - De laudibus virginis Mariae by Augustine of Ancona and Laus Mariae by Conrad of Heimburg; in addition, the manuscript contains writings of other authors of the second half of the 14th century, Matouš from Krakov and Henry of Langenstein, sermons and other texts.

In 2023, the Regional Museum in Olomouc digitised a hymnal referred to after its scribe as the Hymnal of Jan Pinkava (shelf mark K-24071). The manuscript was written in 1732–1735 and contains songs for the religious holidays throughout the year and hymns for some other occasions. It is decorated with a large number of pen-and-ink initials. In the long passages of the codex, these are coloured and accompanied by floral or zoomorphic elements.

In 2023, the library of the Premonstratensian Canonry in Nová Říše digitised four manuscripts from the 15th century. A codex of Czech origin is an incompletely preserved antiphonary acquired in 1414 for the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec (shelf mark NR 81). The other manuscripts come from Western Europe. They comprise the richly illuminated Speculum humanae salvationis from the first third of the 15th century (NR 80), a short mystical text (NR 75) and the book of hours written and illuminated in Flanders in 1480 for Jan van der Scaghe and his wife Anne de Memere (NR 90).

Twenty-six volumes from the collections of the Music Department of the National Library of the Czech Republic were digitised in 2023. Most of them come from the period between the turn of the 19th century and the first half of the 19th century and have been acquired by the National Library from the collection of Ludvík Hornov. These are scores of various works, composed i.a. by Jakub Jan Ryba, Jan Křtitel Vaňhal, Vinzenz Maschek and Vojtěch Jírovec. A smaller part of the digitised group comes from the music collection of the Strachota family of schoolmasters and cantors from Panenský Týnec and Vrbno – it also included the oldest document, a collection of organ compositions i.a. by Josef Seger and František Xaver Brixi from 1773 (shelf mark 59 R 3876).

Twenty-five codices have been digitised from the collections of the Department of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books of the National Library of the Czech Republic. They come from several language or provenance groups. The first consists of Central European Latin manuscripts (from the Czech lands as well as Austria and Germany) from the 14th and 15th centuries. The manuscripts mostly contain preaching works (the authors include e.g. Milíč of Kroměříž / Johannes Milicius de Cremsier – shelf mark VI.D.3 and Jacobus de Voragine – VI.D.7) and various writings of the Church Fathers; legal writings are represented by the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, and hagiographic literature by one of the copies of the Golden Legend (Legenda aurea). Two volumes include German-language texts: Rechtssumme by the Dominican Berthold, also known as Berthold of Freiburg (XVI.C.41), and a collection containing, among others, Buch der Liebkosung by Johannes von Neumarkt / Noviforensis (a translation of the pseudo-Augustinian Liber soliloquiorum). A larger group is represented by Czech-language manuscripts of the 15th century. These are mainly legal, moral-educational and meditative texts, with the exception being a collection of hymns of Holy Week antiphonary and missal (XVII.F.3). The last group comprises five volumes deposited under the shelf mark XXIII. These are books from the former Prague Lobkowicz library and most of them were part of the library of the Premonstratensian monastery in Weissenau in the Middle Ages (e.g. a commentary on the Book of Psalms – XXIII.E.48; the collection of sermons by Gaufridus Babio and other authors – XXIII.E.21 – this codex also includes an incompletely preserved catalogue of the Weissenau library from the 13th century). A manuscript of Czech origin is a collection of the regulations of the Cistercian Order, made for the monastery at Pomuk (XXIII.E.25).

Two manuscripts from the collections of the famous Latin school in Jáchymov were digitised in 2023. The older one is a hymnal (shelf mark LC 2), compiled and mostly also copied by Nikolaus Herman, a teacher at the Jáchymov school. The codex was completed in 1558 and was later expanded with several additions. The second manuscript (LC 77) was written in the 18th century and contains notes from lessons based on the works of Aristotle.

This year’s (2023) digitized books from the Slavonic Library come from the 17th to 19th centuries from regions in present-day Dalmatia (Croatia) and Russia. The oldest book is a printed poetic transcription of the King David’s Psalter from 1678 with 3 prefaces by Symeon of Polotsk, a scholar and clergyman (shelf mark T 8086). From the end of the 18th century comes a manuscript collection of poems and translations of old Croatian authors from the Milan Rešetar collection (shelf mark T 4121). The 19th century is represented with (1) a manuscript description of a monastery in the former town of Voskresensk (current Istra) in the Moscow Region (shelf mark T 4328); and (2) a copy of the life of Peter I by Petr Krekshin from the Alexander Grigorev collection of North Russian manuscripts (shelf mark A 14).