Digitised Documents from the Strahov Library

Thirty manuscripts, mostly from the beginning of the 19th century, were digitised from the collections of the Music Department of the National Library in 2018. They are the scores of works by W. A. Mozart, especially symphonies, but also various of his smaller works were made accessible. All of these documents form part of the set of the Mozart Memorial, which was established in the National Library in 1837 as the very first Mozarteum in the world. It contains a representative selection of Mozart’s work, especially historically important copies and the first printed editions.

The Regional Museum in Mikulov digitised five medieval codices in 2018. The oldest of them is manuscript MIK 6365 from the turn of the 14th century, containing a summary of the contents of Biblical books by Peter of Poitiers and the interpretation of the Books of Sentences by William of Auxerre. The other manuscripts are of Czech origin and come from between the end of the 14th century and the end of the 15th century. They mostly comprise collections of sermons, whose authors include Matthew of Kraków, Bertold of Regensburg, Tomášek of Strakonice and Albert of Padua; manuscript MIK 6362 contains various works for confession; codex MIK 6361 consists of miscellaneous astronomical texts.

In 2018, the Regional Museum in Louny provided access to a binder’s volume containing geographical works printed in Amsterdam in 1674–1676 and dealing with China (Olfert Dapper: Gedenkwürdige Verrichtung der Niederländischen ost-indischen Gesellschaft in dem Käiserreich Taising oder Sina and Beschreibung des Keyserthums Sina oder Taising). Both printed books are accompanied by a number of illustrative copper-plate engravings depicting Chinese scenes.

In 2018, the Regional Museum in Teplice provided access to a set of twenty manuscripts of homogeneous content from the 18th century. These are Teplice (shelf marks MS 73–MS 91) and Carlsbad (shelf mark MS 92) spa guest lists. The Teplice lists record spa guests in 1709, 1746, 1769, 1783 and then in a continuous series from 1789 until 1800; the Carlsbad list is related to the year 1797 or 1798.

In 2018, the Museum of West Bohemia in Pilsen digitised one incunabulum and two early printed books. The incunabulum, a part of the Bible complemented by various exegeses (shelf mark 502 A 009), was printed in Venice in 1495 and its binding was made for Pope Paul IV in the middle of the 16th century. The earlier printed book contains two works printed in Nuremberg in the second half of the 17th century with examples of calligraphy, whereas the later, Anweisung zu der allgemeinen Reiß und Zeichnung-Kunst by Johann Georg Seiller, comes from Zurich from 1757.

Twenty-eight modern manuscripts were digitised from the collections of the Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians at Strahov in 2018. They mostly come from two thematic groups – alba amicorum and historiographical sources mainly from the urban milieu. The first group comprises, for example, alba amicorum of Matouš Günther (DG IV 27), Josef and Rudolf Lidl of Myslov (AD VII 81), Michal Schumann and Kašpar Caselius (AD IV 123), Adam Lehner of Kouba (DF IV 24) and Kryštof Schilling (AD XIII 22); memorial records can also be found in the notebook of Jáchym and Jan of Nostitz (DB V 12). Historiographical texts and collections of excerpts on the history of individual towns are primarily related to Prague, such as the collection DJ II 8 and works by Andreas Jakob Vogdt (DJ II 10, DJ II 13) and Václav Jakš (DH III 20). Other towns include Český Brod (DF IV 42, DD II 5), Kouřim (DG II 36), Litoměřice (DA IV 1, DA IV 12), Mladá Boleslav (DF V 10, DG III 41), Pilsen (DC III 15, DD III 1) and Lower Silesian Bolesławiec (DB V 48). Works from the aristocratic milieu comprise a family chronicle compiled by Johann Georg von Höpflingen und Bergendorf (DG I 6), a genealogical work on the Wunschwitz family (DH II 22), and several manuscripts containing German texts of the Rosenberg Chronicle.

The National Medical Library in Prague has provided access to five early printed books or their binder’s volumes from its collections. The earliest of them is the collection of German medical texts, printed in Frankfurt am Main around the middle of the 16th century (shelf mark T 452), whereas the other printed books come from the period between the end of the 16th century and the end of the 18th century. Most of the works are German. The Czech ones are represented by Kniha o babském umění [A Textbook of Midwifery] by Raphael Johann Steidele, printed in 1778 (shelf mark T 446).

The newly digitized codices of the National Library come from three larger provenance sets: the old collection of the NL, manuscripts from the monastery in Teplá and the former Prague Lobkowicz Library. In terms of content, the group is quite varied, with the predominance of theological, liturgical and homiletic codices, but also some hagiographic, medical, grammatical, philosophical and legal works as well as Biblical manuscripts, in some cases with exegeses. Codices with extant ownership records come from important Czech medieval libraries: besides the colleges of the Prague university, they also comprise volumes from the Augustinian canonries in Roudnice nad Labem and Třeboň as well as the Cistercian monastery in Zlatá Koruna. The earliest digitized codices come from the 12th century, the latest from the beginning of the 16th century. The most frequent language is Latin, but the manuscripts digitised also include an important work of Czech literature, the so-called Manuscript from Hradec Králové, containing hymns and satires (shelf mark XXIII G 92), and among German codices some manuscripts with legal texts (Teplá MS. C 5, Teplá MS. D 13). Works interesting for the history of book painting are e.g. the codice Teplá MS. E 46, made in Magdeburg in 1491, the manuscripts of Czech origin Teplá MS. D 16 (the New Testament with a commentary) and Teplá MS. b 15 (a prayer book), and the Italian manuscript Teplá MS. E 8.

Eight manuscripts from the collections of the Slavonic Library were digitised in 2017. The earliest of them are the incomplete Sudebnik of Ivan III, a collection of laws of the Russian state (shelf mark B 1), copied around 1560, and a liturgical codex (shelf mark T 4311), made in Ukraine most likely at the end of the 16th century. The other digitised manuscripts come from the 17th and 18th centuries, specifically from the areas of Russia, Ukraine and Croatia.

The Museum of the Brno Region digitised five medieval manuscripts coming from the library of the Benedictine Abbey in Rajhrad in 2017. Apart from collections of sermons, written by Andreas de Broda and Albertus de Padua, they include the medical collection R 421 and the codex R 427, containing texts of diverse content, comprising legends, confession works, the treatise De ludo scaccorum by Jacob de Cessolis and others.