The collection of incunabula in the National Library of the Czech Republic contains a previously unknown print published by the Naples printer Sixtus Riessinger at the end of 1470 or, more likely, in 1471. The four-folio Lamentatio Nigropontis complements the collection of 16 hitherto known prints…

The company of Johann Georg Gastl and his sons was one of major printing and bookselling houses operating in Brno in the middle of the 19th century. Johann Nepomuk Gastl and his younger brother Franz Gastl had trained as booksellers. Johann Nepomuk Gastl assumed the management of the company after…

The paper deals with the controversy over the catalogue of the writings of Jan Hus between Josef Truhlář (1840–1914), a curator of the Prague University Library, and Václav Flajšhans (1866–1950), a high-school professor, which took place from 1898 until 1905. The latter had been preparing an…

The Slovak National Archives in Bratislava contain a large manuscript catalogue of an extensive book collection formerly located in one of the numerous residences of the branched aristocratic family Ziči, namely in Voderady near Trnava. The manuscript catalogue, entitled Catalogus Librorum…

One of the most extensive and interesting aristocratic libraries in early Baroque Bohemia was built by Count Ignác Karel of Šternberk (Ignaz Karl von Sternberg) in his family seat at Zelená Hora Castle near Nepomuk in the last third of the 17th century. A large part of the defunct Zelená Hora…

The personal mottos of intellectuals, called symbola, came into greater use under the influence of the Italian Renaissance and its ideas of true nobility, which is not acquired by descent but by education and virtue. Inspired by noblemen, scholars created their own personal representations, among…

The Nové Syrovice Castle library was collected by the Counts of Nimptsch, in particular Count Johann Heinrich von Nimptsch (1723–1806) and Count Karl von Nimptsch (1803–1869), and it also contains traces of the library of the Counts Marcolini. A later part of the collection was added by the Counts…

The origins of collecting are as old as humanity itself, and practically anything can be collected. In the 16th century, it became fashionable to collect natural peculiarities with the aim to create so-called cabinets of curiosities. The owners were distinguished and wealthy people with high social…

The article summarises new findings and complements earlier studies concerning the history of the library of the Franciscan monastery of Our Lady of the Snows in the New Town of Prague. Its first part deals with the maker of rococo bookcases from 1764, the second part summarises previously unused…

In the 18th-century Habsburg empire, Bohemian linen (and glass) was an important export article for trade within Europe as well as with overseas regions. The aims of this article are to explain briefly the general context of these commercial activities, tied to the Iberian Peninsula, and, in…

The Parisian manuscript Tacuinum sanitatis is considered to be the oldest of a series of luxurious illuminated manuscripts containing an abridged text by Ibn Butlān that were commissioned by Gian Galeazzo Visconti or aristocrats in his circle. According to a note added later, it is believed to have…