Manuscripts from the Strahov Library

The digitisation of manuscripts from the Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians at Strahov (the Strahov Library) continued in 2020 with another 34 volumes, predominantly deposited under the shelf mark DA III. Most of the codices are of Czech origin and come from the 15th–19th centuries. The oldest manuscript (DA III 24), which was copied by Matěj Čech from Týn nad Vltavou in 1442 and 1444, contains the confessional manual by Thomas of Chobham and the popular theological work of Hugh Ripelin of Strasburg Compendium theologicae veritatis. The collection of Latin sermons by Jan Mystopol with Czech insertions (DA III 16) comes from the second third of the 16th century; sketches of sermons were written by Antonín Jeroným Dvořák of Bor around the middle of the 18th century and complemented slightly later by anonymous drafts of sermons at Strahov (DA III 35); sermons are also written in the binder’s volume DA III 41, with their author mostly being the Strahov Premonstratensian Bohumír Jan Dlabač. Historiographical works are significantly represented, including an autograph of the first part of the work Flori Austrio-Bohemici by Georgius Crugerius in DA III 15, a set of works on the history of the monastery in Kladruby in DA III 14, extracts from the annual reports of Jesuit colleges for 1758–1763 in DA III 32 and DA III 33, extracts on the history of Litoměřice in DA III 38, and handmade copies of the collection of Tomáš Antonín Putzlacher in DA III 44 and DA III 48. The manuscript DA III 36 includes, besides a treatise on the Premonstratensian convent in Dolní Kounice, also an excerpt from the travelogue of the Franciscan Remedius Prutký. Numerous volumes contain notes from lectures: the earliest come from the Jesuit college in Vienna (DA III 5), most of the lectures were held in the 18th and 19th centuries mainly in the Archbishop’s Seminary in Prague and at the Prague university. Other digitised shelf marks include two manuscripts on alchemy (DD V 34 and DG IV 40), the first of which comes from the last quarter of the 16th century and contains i.a. descriptions of experiments associated with the name of Edward Kelly.