Blog

The digitisation of the Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians at Strahov – the Strahov Library continued with a group of 18 modern manuscripts from the DB II shelf-mark section. Most of these volumes are of Czech origin and come from the period between the first half of the 16th century and the beginning of the 19th century. In terms of content, most of them are legal texts and collections (DB II 9, DB II 10, DB II 11, DB II 13, DB II 15, DB II 16), including a Czech translation of the Institutiones of Emperor Justinian, copied in 1562 (DB II 14). An important work of the Czech literature of the early 17th century is Město duchovní jménem Rozkoš duše [The Spiritual City Called the Delight of the Soul] by Václav Porcius Vodňanský (DB II 4). Moreover, the digitised manuscripts comprise notes from the university of Prague, specifically from the lectures of Bernard Bolzano (DB II 19, DB II 20), further prayer books (DB II 22, DB II 23) and Czech sermons (DB II 5, DB II 7).

In 2024, the National Technical Library in Prague provided access to one manuscript and nine printed book from its collections. The manuscript (shelf mark C 1178, system number 615616) was probably written at the turn of the 18th century and contains a collection of alchemical recipes. The printed books come from between 1645 and the early 19th century; the oldest (shelf mark F 11, system number 606794) was printed in Paris, the others in Germany. Most of them deal with the military and with fortification architecture.

In 2024, the Museum of the Brno Region digitised four more medieval manuscripts from the library of the Benedictine Abbey in Rajhrad. In terms of the time of their creation and their content, they form a homogeneous whole – all the codices date from the first half of the 15th century and contain mostly collections of sermons, supplemented by other, shorter texts (e.g. a treatise against Communion under both kinds in R 368). Some manuscripts also include Czech and German glosses.

Two manuscripts from the collections of the North Bohemian Museum in Liberec were digitised in 2024. The earlier one is a theological treatise of Johann Chrysostomos Kretschmer (Inv. No. ST 2406) from 1667–1669. The later one is the chronicle of the village of Jítrava (Inv. No. ST 2405), which was written by the local stonemason Michael Linke in 1894–1900; apart from a short historical introduction, it mainly contains reports on contemporary or recently past events of the 19th century.