Sadská (Czech Republic)

The house of the Canons Regular of St Augustine in Sadská in central Bohemia was founded in 1362 by the Archbishop of Prague, Arnošt of Pardubice. Its existence lasted for scarcely six decades, making it the shortest-lived of all the order’s houses in Bohemia. During the Hussite Wars, in 1420, the house was plundered, the canons abandoned it, and it was never re-established.

The manuscripts from the Sadská library were incorporated into the library of the Roudnice house in the fifteenth century, which allowed part of the original Sadská collection to survive. Twenty-nine manuscripts from Sadská have been identified. They are codices from the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, mostly large-format, parchment, and illuminated. In terms of content, biblical texts and liturgical books predominate, alongside works of the Church Fathers, with exegetical literature also relatively well represented.

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. 139–155

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