Medieval Manuscripts from the National Library of the Czech Republic

The National Library has recently provided access to 19 codices from between the 14th century and the beginning of the 16th century. Most of them are placed under the shelf mark XVII and thus contain texts in Czech. The manuscripts include i.a. probably the oldest extant version of the collection Ráj duše (/The Paradise of the Soul / from 1383, XVII A 19; the same text has also been preserved in the codex XVII D 32 from the turn of the 15th century), several volumes containing a Czech version of Lives of the Holy Fathers (XVII C 16, XVII C 17, XVII C 28) and Czech translations of Historia scholastica, the narrative Biblical history by Peter Comestor (XVII D 18), and of the moral-educational work Quadripartitus apologeticus (XVII E 12, in Czech Čtverohranáč). A unique notation of the song Našě sestra Jana [Our Site Jane] forms part of the collection of poems and other texts XIV G 45; several of the newly digitised codices are written in German (shelf mark XVI and a collection of theological texts from the Prague Lobkowicz Library XXIII D 178).