Sheet-Music Manuscripts from the National Library

In 2023, the Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians at Strahov – the Strahov Library digitised 22 modern manuscripts placed under the shelf mark DA V. Without exception, these are notes from lectures given at the Archbishop’s Seminary in Prague, at the studies of individual religious orders or at the university of Prague between the 17th century and the beginning of the 19th century. The lecturers included prominent church leaders and teachers of the time, such as the Irish Franciscans (Hibernians) Anthony Farrell and Eduard Tyrrell, the Premonstratensians Gilbert Jan Michael Himmer and Benedict Johann Nepomuk Pfeiffer, the Jesuit Martin Eisman, and the Cistercians Nivard Maschka and Hieronymus Besnecker.

Serbowka manuscript collections, documenting the work and especially the literary and translation activities of the members of the association of the Sorbs studying in Prague, are deposited in the Hórnik Sorbian Library now. Within the first phase of digitisation, access has been provided to eighteen volumes, covering the time periods 1847-1849, 1850-1854, 1856-1859, 1861-1863, 1864-1866, 1883-1884, 1885-1887 a 1888-1890.

In 2023, the Regional Museum in Mikulov digitised four more manuscripts from its collections. The earliest of them is a collection of sermons for movable and fixed feasts from approximately the 1450s (shelf mark MIK 6395). Around 1570, a copy of the commentary on the legal textbook Institutiones was made, based on lectures by Erdmann Copernicus (MIK 6396). A catalogue of the book collection of Ferdinand Hoffmann of Grünbüchl from the second half of the 16th century with later additions (MIK 6470) is related to the history of the Mikulov library. The last codex, coming from the 18th century, is written in Armenian and contains principles for the consecration of priests and the appointment of deacons (MIK 6476).

In 2022, the Town Museum and Gallery Polička provided access to a manuscript collection of Czech religious songs (shelf mark K 14) most likely from the 16th century, which was later complemented by further texts. It was mostly specified on what occasions individual songs were to be sung (the majority of them were intended for the movable and fixed feasts of the liturgical year). Only their beginnings were usually notated.

The Czech Pharmaceutical Museum in Kuks (a centre of Charles University in Prague – the Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové) digitised two manuscripts in 2022. The author of the codex which most likely comes from 1790 is the pharmacist Eduard Mengmann (Materia medica oder Artzney Buch, shelf mark HK475). The second manuscript is the register of the General Pharmaceutical Council in Prague (shelf mark HGL, inv. č. 4, kn. 1), which contains records related to its agenda – official decrees, lists of members and pharmacies, financial records, etc. – added gradually from the 1780s until the 1820s.

The Regional Museum in Olomouc has digitised a hymnal referred to after its scribe as Klabík’s Hymnal II (shelf mark K-24068). It was written in Želechovice near Zlín in 1674 and later used in Lomnice near Tišnov; it was gradually supplemented by other songs. The beginnings of the texts of the original layer are decorated with coloured initials.

In 2022, the National Library of Medicine in Prague provided access to four printed books from the first half of the 19th century. Three of them, including the oldest, which deals with smallpox vaccination (Erste Fortsetzung der Geschichte der Vaccination in Böhmen from 1805, shelf mark T 528/2), were printed in Prague. The fourth, Chirurgische lithographirte Tafeln (shelf mark T 537), is of foreign origin – it was printed in Graz probably in 1827.

Another group of digitised medieval manuscripts of the National Library of the Czech Republic comprises ten volumes. These are codices created over a wide time span. The oldest of them are a binder’s volume of various originally separate books of the Bible with glosses (shelf mark III.E.3) and a homily on the Gospels by Saint Gregory the Great, Pope (VI.C.25). The other manuscripts come from the 14th and 15th centuries; apart from theological and preaching texts, they also contain miscellaneous educational works. Czech authors are represented by the works recorded in the codex VI.C.11: these include an exposition of the Book of Psalms by Mikuláš of Rakovník and a treatise by Štěpán of Páleč, De aequivocatione nominis ecclesia. German-language texts are contained in the manuscripts VI.C.27 (instructions for growing fruit trees) and IV.E.26 (the contents of individual Psalms).

The Olomouc Research Library has digitised a collective volume from the first half of the 15th century (shelf mark M II 55). It contains the speeches of an envoy of the Council of Basel, Juan de Palomar, and other anti-Hussite works as well as writings of the Chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Charlier de Gerson, and shorter texts, including the bulls of Pope Martin V.

The first part of the manuscripts digitised from the collections of the National Library of the Czech Republic in 2022 comprises 27 medieval codices placed under the shelf marks I–VI. Most of the manuscripts are of Czech origin and were written in the 14th and 15th centuries. In terms of content, they mainly include various theological writings and collections of sermons. Among the works of Czech authors, access has been provided to the commentary of Jan Rokycana on two letters of the Apostle Paul (shelf mark IV A 24). Some volumes also contain works on the natural sciences – for instance a treatise on medicines, probably by Nicholas of Salerno (III E 13), a medical compendium (I G 23) and the astrological work Liber introductorius ad iudicia stellarum by Guido Bonatti de Forlivio (IV B 10). Liturgical manuscripts are represented, for example, by a 14th-century hymnal of Friars Minor (VI C 20b), a Cistercian missal from the turn of the 14th century (I E 10) and a book of sequences from the turn of the 16th century (VI C 15). A work important for the history of German literature is the collection I C 40, which contains, among other things, Heinrich Seuse’s Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, Irmhart Öser’s translation of Rabbi Samuel’s letter to Rabbi Isaac, and the so-called ‘Münchner Apostelbuch’.