Blog

The National Library of the CR has provided access to some medieval manuscripts. The oldest of them comes from the 12th century, but most of them were not written until the late Middle Ages. In terms of content, the works include the Bible and its exegeses (those whose authors have been identified comprise e.g. the manuscript III.F.18 by Nicholas of Lyra or the concordance of the Gospels by Mikuláš Biskupec of Pelhřimov in III.F.5), but also patristic and medical works (the extensive compendium by Gilbert of England in III.H.20), preaching, legal and ancient literature (Ovid’s works in III.H.24a–III.H.24c). Some manuscripts are interesting not only for their content but also for their information on former owners: the owner of the codex III.G.1 was Vojtěch Raňkův of Ježov, who had probably acquired it during his work in Paris; the manuscript III.E.34 is one of the few manuscripts that have been preserved from the library of the Reček College (Collegium sanctissimae Mariae) of the Prague university.

Národní technická knihovna zpřístupnila v roce 2018 devět starých tisků. Nejstarším z nich je italský překlad Eukleidova díla, vytištěný v Benátkách v roce 1585 (A 232); z Basileje z roku 1678 pochází pojednání o trigonometrii Georga Friedricha Meyera s četnými dřevořezy (A 241). Ostatní tisky vznikly v 18. století, převážně v Německu a jeden další rovněž v Itálii. Po obsahové stránce jde o texty matematické, ale také o prezentace vynálezů, které měly sloužit k pobavení.

The Military History Institute in Prague provided access to seventeen manuscripts from the collections of its library in 2018. Most of them come from the 18th century and are written in German. These are chiefly manuals for marching and military exercises and texts on fortress architecture (the most extensive of them is the set of documents of Johannes Christoph Glaser, which were further reworked by Friedrich Ludwig Aster), also e.g. a handwritten copy of the printed book Grundsätze der Lagerkunst und Taktik by Frederick II with a planned supplement, and documents on military exercises of the Austrian army 1781–1804.

The ten recently digitised documents from the Ethnographic Museum and Gallery in Česká Lípa are dominated by manuscripts. The whole set is thematically varied and comprises i.a. the catalogue of the Capuchin library in Zákupy from 1778 (RK 134), the history of the Servite monastery Mountain of the Mother of God (Muttergottesberg) in Králíky (RK 135) and sheet-music manuscripts from the monastery of the Order of Hermits of St Augustine in Česká Lípa (RK 87, RK 117). The manuscript RK-A 2, containing the lives of saints, including St Procopius, comes from the same monastery. Early printed books are represented by Žaltář, totižto písně chval božských [The Psalter, or Songs in Praise of God], a unique book printed by Jiří the Younger Melantrich of Aventinum in 1581, and a part of the binder’s volume of works on the theory of painting and astronomy, whose textual units originated in Germany during the 16th century (accession number 60216).