Blog

In 2021, the Olomouc Research Library digitised a Greek manuscript from the second half of the 15th century, probably of Italian origin (shelf mark M I 79). The codex contains Hesiod’s works Opera et dies and Theogonia with commentaries, Pseudo-Hesiodic Scutum Herculis, and other shorter texts.

The collection library of the Regional Museum in Olomouc has provided access to the hymnbook referred to as the Bzenec Hymnal according to its place of use (shelf mark K-24087). Most of this codex was written in the second half of the 17th century, perhaps in the 1660s, but the blank pages continued to be filled with other songs even in the 18th century and the manuscript also contains occasional records of contemporary events. The division of the manuscript corresponds to other hymnbooks: it begins with morning hymns, which are followed by hymns for movable feasts of the liturgical year, hymns for Sundays, holidays and other occasions, commune sanctorum, feasts of the saints and the Virgin Mary, and it is concluded by evening hymns.

In 2021, the National Technical Library provided access to eleven early printed books and their binder’s volumes. The oldest of them is shelf mark A 19, which contains two Nuremberg editions from 1538 and 1540 – Albrecht Dürer’s Unterweisung der Messung mit dem Zirkel und Richtscheit and Jean Pèlerin’s Von der Kunst Perspectiva. Other printed books come from the 16th–18th centuries from the Czech lands, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. They mainly concern architecture and seafaring.

In 2021, the Museum of the Brno Region provided access to another two medieval manuscripts from the collections of the library of the Benedictine Abbey in Rajhrad. Codex R 353 contains an incomplete Latin Bible from the first half of the 15th century with several Czech glosses. The collection of German texts R 360 was copied in 1424 and contains Henry Suso’s Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit, a translation of the apocryphal letters about St Jerome made by the bishop of Litomyšl and Olomouc John of Neumarkt, and a translation of the work Vitaspatrum, which mainly includes the lives and teachings of Old Christian hermits.