Roudnice nad Labem (Czech Republic)

The Order of the Canons Regular of St Augustine was introduced into Bohemia by the Bishop of Prague, John IV of Dražice, when he founded the first house of the order in the northern Bohemian town Roudnice nad Labem in 1333. It became the most important of the order’s houses in Bohemia: several other communities were subsequently founded from it, and unique religious customs – the so-called Statutes of Roudnice – were compiled there, later used both in Bohemia and in neighbouring lands. The Roudnice house was plundered during the Hussite Wars and, despite attempts at its restoration, probably ceased to exist as early as 1467.

The Roudnice house was an intellectual centre of its time, and its library ranks among the most important medieval monastic libraries in Bohemia. Although only a portion of the original collection has survived, an impressive 175 manuscripts have been identified. Most of the codices were written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but several dozen older manuscripts have also been preserved, the majority of them brought from Italy and France. Among the surviving manuscripts, large-format parchment volumes predominate, and a substantial number are illuminated. In terms of content, liturgical books, biblical texts, and works of the Church Fathers are especially well represented, together accounting for nearly half of the entire corpus. Among the works produced in the High and Late Middle Ages, exegetical writings, sermon collections, and legal literature occur in the greatest numbers.

A comprehensive study of this library has been published, along with a detailed catalogue of all its manuscripts:

• Michal DRAGOUN – Lucie DOLEŽALOVÁ – Adéla EBERSONOVÁ (edd.), Ubi est finis huius libri deus scit. Středověká knihovna augustiniánských kanovníků v Roudnici nad Labem [Ubi est finis huius libri deus scit. Medieval Library of Augustinian Canons in Roudnice nad Labem]. Praha: Scriptorium, 2015. pp. 676

  A preview of the book is available here: http://academia.edu/14687434

  The book can be purchased here: http://www.scriptorium.cz

Research on this library has also been published here:

• Adéla EBERSONOVÁ. Středověké rukopisné knihovny řeholních kanovníků sv. Augustina v Čechách [Medieval Libraries of the Canons Regular of St Augustine in Bohemia]. PhD thesis. Praha: Charles University, Faculty of Arts, 2020, pp. 24–93

  The full text of the thesis is available here: https://dspace.cuni.cz/handle/20.500.11956/124141