Medieval Manuscripts from the National Library of the Czech Republic

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).