Digitised Manuscripts of the National Library

Sixteen early printed books or their binder’s volumes that have been digitised come from the collections of the Ethnographic Museum and Gallery in Česká Lípa. They were written between the 16th century and the turn of the 19th century and mostly include Bohemica. They from a part of the collection bequeathed to this institution by Bohumil Malotín. In a number of cases, they are unique copies. In terms of content, these include calendars (some even with handwritten comments), prayers and hymns, chapbooks, postils and other texts. The only exception among the Czech-language printed books is the mostly Latin collection Hymnodia Franciscana.

The digitisation of the collections in the National Museum Library has continued in 2016 with four manuscripts from the 14th century. The oldest of them (XV A 2) comes from its first third; in the Middle Ages, it was a part of the library of the Cistercian monastery in Zlatá Koruna, where it is likely to have been written. The remaining three illuminated codices were written in the second half of the 14th century; they belonged to the convent of Augustinian Canons in Roudnice nad Labem. All the manuscripts contain theological and homiletic texts.

The set of digitised sheet music from the collections of the Music Department of the National Library of the Czech Republic has been augmented by another 57 shelf marks. The oldest manuscript digitised is a Dominican collection of texts for the Office, hymns and a part of the proper of the Mass for selected feast days of the liturgical year from the end of the 15th century. A large part of later items is represented by works by Jan Nepomuk Kaňka, partly preserved in an autograph. Other authors represented include e.g. F. X. Brixi, V. Maschek and B. D. Weber.

In 2016, six partly notated manuscripts from the collections of the Ethnographic Institute of the Moravian Museum have been digitised. The oldest of them is the Hymnal of Martin Bursík from 1736–1737 written in Kuželov (the Hodonín district); the others are of Czech and Moravian origin and come from the 19th century. In terms of content, these are collections of hymns and prayers for various occasions.

In 2016, the North Bohemian Museum in Liberec has digitised five shelf marks. Besides a collection of engravings, these comprise the history of the town of Liberec written by Karl Felgenhauer, a parish priest in Křižany, at the beginning of the 19th century, and an inventory of the church of St Lawrence in Chrastava from 1729 and 1737. The last two sets of loose sheets contain the tracing of the decorated parts of blind-stamped bindings, a result of the collecting activities of a significant scholar, Bohumil Nuska.

In 2016, the Library of the Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians at Strahov has digitised a large collection of modern historiographical sources. These include extensive works (the German version of a part of the Memoirs of Count Vilém Slavata and the volumes of Annales Ferdinandei by Franz Christoph Khevenhüller, important for the study of the development of their final version) as well as sources on individual monasteries (Strahov, Doksany, and Svatý Kopeček near Olomouc).

The set of 109 digitised maps comes from the 18th and 19th centuries. Individual maps and plans cover various parts of Europe, especially Italy, Austria, Hungary, East-Central Europe (Galicia, Poland and Russia) and the lands of the Balkan peninsula. They include geographical as well as special (railway, postal etc.) maps.

The recently digitised medieval manuscripts from the National Library are relatively varied in their content. Apart from the most common theological and preaching texts and liturgical codices, they also comprise ancient literature (VIII H 24), rhetorical (VIII H 22), medical (VIII H 34), historiographical (XIII D 7) or hagiographical (XIV E 8) texts. In the Middle Ages, codices XIII D 7 and XIII F 12 formed part of the library of Charles College of the Prague university. They are included in its earliest library inventory. The manuscripts likewise come from other large medieval institutional libraries: the Augustinian monastery in Třeboň and the Cistercian monastery in Zlatá Koruna. Czech-language manuscripts are represented by three volumes of the Bible, illuminated manuscripts mainly by the prayer book VI G 24.

The first digitised document from the collections of the Museum of the Vysočina Region in Havlíčkův Brod is an evangelical postil by Martin Philadelphus Zámrský, which was printed in Leipzig in 1602. The incompletely preserved early printed book was also restored before the digitisation.

The Museum of the Brno Region Muzeum has provided access to another four medieval manuscripts from the library of the Benedictine monastery in Rajhrad in 2015. The missals R 397 and R 398 as well as the exegesis of the New Testament and Biblical prologues R 18 were created in the second half of the 14th century, the Czech New Testament complemented by other texts R 390 was written in the first half of the 15th century. With the exception of the New Testament, all the manuscripts are decorated to varying degrees.