Medieval Manuscripts from the National Museum Library

From the collections of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the CR, v.v.i., a binder’s volume of incunabula and several early printed books have been digitised. The incunabula (shelf mark B 12261) were printed in Cologne in 1497 and 1499, whereas the early printed books come from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain from 1631–1780. They contain a panegyric on Maria Theresa and comprise mainly historical and geographical literature.

A homogeneous set of large liturgical manuscripts – antiphonaries and graduals from the collections of the Strahov Library has been digitised. Individual codices come from the period between the end of the 15th century and the 17th century. The oldest of them is the gradual of Friars Minor DA I 4, probably of Silesian origin, which was later owned by the monastery in Znojmo. Gradual DA I 5 was made directly in the Strahov monastery at the beginning of the 17th century. It was written by the Premonstratensian scribe Jan Václav Šícha and commissioned by the abbot of the Strahov monastery Johann Lohel. The other codices (DA I 1–3) are of foreign origin. Like DA I 5, they are quite richly decorated, but the quality of the illuminations is not considered as high.

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.

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.

The manuscripts of the National Library that have recently been made accessible can be divided into several groups. The largest of them comprises medieval codices mostly of Czech origin, whose content is quite varied: there are preaching and theological, but also legal, liturgical, medical, mathematical and astronomical texts. The most interesting manuscript in German (shelf mark XVI) are the town statutes of Horní Slavkov. The digitised items further included two volumes of the Memoirs of Vilém Slavata of Chlum and Košumberk from the collections of the Prague Lobkowicz Library and various copies of earlier historical sources from the Thun-Hohenstein Library in Děčín. Two manuscripts from the 17th and 18th centuries were made accessible also from collections of the Slavonic Library.

The greatest part of digitised manuscripts of the Military History Institute in Prague is formed by reports of Prince Albert Casimir August of Saxony, Duke of Teschen, on various military conflicts of the last quarter of the 18th century, accompanied by extensive map material and tabular overviews. Smaller volumes contain copies of military orders, reports on military campaigns and treatises on ammunition casting.

Another part of the manuscripts from the collections of the National Library that have been made accessible contains mainly modern handwritten copies of earlier historical sources coming from the Thun-Hohenstein library in Děčín (shelf mark XIX); handwritten copies of works by Bohuslav Balbín can be found in the two-volume manuscript XXIII.C.40. The medieval codices that have recently been digitised are of Czech origin and were written in the second half of the 14th century and at the beginning of the 15th century; in terms of content, they are an assortment of sermonic, mystical, natural-science, theological and philosophical works.

In 2014, the Research Library in Olomouc digitised two manuscripts with theological and homiletic content. They both come from the second half of the 14th century; one formed part of the library of the Carthusian monastery in Prague – Smíchov (M I 326) while the other belonged to the monastery of the same order in Dolany (M II 246).