Blog

The manuscripts of the National Library of the Czech Republic that have recently been made accessible can be divided into three smaller groups. The largest group comes from the old Klementinum collection and includes medieval manuscripts of Czech origin. Their content is quite varied – they comprise theological, medical, astronomical as well as legal works. Manuscript VI.F.17 contains a collection of sermons, compiled by Mikuláš Mníšek, using also some texts of John Hus. Another three digitised codices come from the collections of the former Prague Lobkowicz Library – these are two manuscripts from the 12th–13th centuries acquired from the library of the Premonstratensian monastery in Weissenau and the so-called Heermann’s Rožmberk Chronicle. The smallest is the two-volume anti-Lutheran work Dictionarium Lutheri by Joseph Ernst Barisien.

Manuscriptorium provides access to manuscript collection of the Czech Reformation and to university theses collection, that are  parts of the list of the UNESCO Memory of the World. Manuscriptorium took part in creating recommendation for digitization of the written and documentary heritage. Thus it has gained the right to publish UNESCO 70th anniversary logo on its homepage.

The Museum of the Brno Region continued in the digitisation of manuscripts from the library of the Benedictine Monastery in Rajhrad. Most of them originated in the Middle Ages and contain theological and preaching works. Yet the digitised items include also a missal of the Diocese of Passau (R 347), a binder’s volume comprising some anti-Hussite texts (R 409), and a collection of poems by Johannes Rosinus from the second half of the 16th century (R 583).

Two manuscripts from the 14th century which belonged to the monastery of the Augustinian Canons in Roudnice nad Labem in the Middle Ages were digitised from the collections of the National Museum Library. The first (XIII A 1) contains a collection of letters of Pope Gregory I, the second (XIII A 3) a commentary on the Gospels of Matthew and Mark by Thomas Aquinas.