Jerzy Kaliszuk
Related Authors
Andrzej Kwaśniewski
Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski
Szymon Sułecki
Independent Researcher
Iwona Pietrzkiewicz
University of the National Education Commission in Krakow
Wioletta Pawlikowska
Instytut Historii PAN, Warsaw
Michał Kuran
The University of Lodz
Katarzyna Kaczor-Scheitler
The University of Lodz
Tomasz Moskal
Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski
Piotr Węcowski
University of Warsaw
InterestsView All (13)
Uploads
Papers by Jerzy Kaliszuk
http://otwartehistorie.pl/books/clavis-scriptorum-et-operum-medii-aevi-poloniae/
http://otwartehistorie.pl/books/clavis-scriptorum-et-operum-medii-aevi-poloniae-2/
In 1944 the collection of the National Library in Warsaw was almost entirely destroyed by German troops. This book is the first attempt to reconstruct the collection of medieval Latin manuscripts from that library. The turbulent history of Polish book-collections in the 19th and the first quarter of the 20th centuries prevented pre-war scholars from completing a full description of the collections, and such handwritten catalogues and interventories as existed burnt together with the manuscripts. Based on a painstaking investigation, the author managed to gather information on almost 1,500 medieval Latin manuscripts. In order to reconstruct the content of individual codices, the author made use of a a wide variety of sources: references in scholarly literature of the 19th and 20th centuries; correspondences; partly surviving Russian catalogues and indices; and the miraculously preserved personal notes of the Polish researcher Maria Hornowska (d. 1944).
The book presents not only the history and contents of the collection but also attempts to identify the contexts in which the manuscripts were written and read. A picture thus emerges of complex intellectual network in late medieval Poland, combining monasteries, cathedrals, collegiates, parishes and the University of Cracow and covering virtually the entire area of the state. Books and ideas circulated within this network, creating a sense of common identity in its members above and beyond their specific institutional and geographical communities.
In addition to the analysis of the collection, the publication also contains detailed codicological descriptions of identified medieval Latin manuscripts. The description of the features of individual codices may eventually aid in the identification of other manuscripts that were not burned but taken as booty or souvenirs. The compendium is accompanied by excerpts from historical sources, mainly from Hornowska’s records of destroyed library catalogues, indices, and several reproductions of now lost manuscripts.