Medieval Manuscripts from the National Library of the Czech Republic

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).

In 2023, the Olomouc Research Library digitised a manuscript containing a part of a German translation of the statutes of the Tertiary Sisters of St Francis in Brno (shelf mark M II 166). The manuscript was written in 1519 and was dedicated to Mother Marta, who was already a member of the Brno convent from 1500 and thus was probably, after the Mother Superior, one of the nuns who had the right to decide on the internal issues of the convent.

In 2023, the Military Historical Institute in Prague digitised another 22 manuscripts, dating from the first half of the 19th century and, with a few exceptions, written in German. In terms of content, these comprise military theory manuals, overviews Austrian army units, including the histories of some of them, texts on war events and the figures of military leaders, as well as geographical works, musical texts (shelf marks IIR D 796, IIR F 1622) and documents of personal nature, such as Ludwig von Benedek’s 1843 testimonial from 1843 (shelf mark IIR F 1621).