Manuscriptorium Update 6.1.2010

The most extensive collection of newly digitised documents comes from the holdings of the National Library of the Czech Republic. A large proportion of these comprises illuminated codices. In terms of content, a homogeneous group is the books of hours of French origin from the former Prague Lobkowicz Library. The most highly prized item here is the decoration of the MS XXIII.F.198 dating from around 1420. Further illuminated manuscripts include the Bible or parts of it (Section 72, XXIII.B.1); others are frequently introduced by an initial enclosing an illustration of the author, thus in MS XIII.B.14 we find Bartholomew of Urbino and in Codex VIII.C.3 John Wyclif. One of the oldest Latin fragments is that of a psalter originating in Regensburg at the end of the 8th century (III.F.22). Hebrew MSS are represented by the Cheb Bible (XVIII.F.6) and significant for Czech literary history is an antiphonary recording Bohemian Easter plays (XVII.E.1). The holdings of the Department of Music in the National Library of the Czech Republic contribute mainly liturgical MSS.

A further extensive set of newly released documents comes from the Olomouc Research Library – mainly MSS from the library of the Carthusian Monastery in Dolany – including legal, theological and homiletic works.

Smaller numbers of digitised MSS and prints are today deposited in the Museum of Western Bohemia in Pilsen (two elevations to the aristocracy proclaimed by Rudolf II), in the Institute of Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan.