The Current State of Moravian Carthusian Manuscripts from 14th and 15th Centuries
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The conference paper offers an insight into the musical heritage left by two former Carthusian monasteries in Brno and Dolany, or Olomouc, on the territory of Moravia. Both of them, founded in the fourteenth century, the heyday of the Carthusian Order in the area, gradually built up rich book collections during their existence, which naturally included notated liturgical manuscripts. The eighteenth century, however, together with the Josephine reforms, brought a fatal turning point. In 1782 all the Carthusian monasteries of the Habsburg monarchy were abolished and their rich bibliotheques suffered a severe fate. Only some of the sources were saved and redistributed to other establishments. A fraction of this segment of the books has survived to this day and is more or less scattered across several institutions in Europe. The main repositories are the Austrian National Library in Vienna and the Research Library in Olomouc. In addition to the outlined context, the present conference paper will offer an insight into the current state of the surviving medieval notated manuscripts from Moravian Carthusian monasteries, which have been successfully provenanced. The given sources will be briefly introduced, while selected codices will be given more detailed attention. Above all, the paper seeks to highlight the uniqueness of this group of manuscripts and the importance of their future research with a view to contributing new knowledge not only within the local medieval musical culture, but also in a wider, European context, pointing to aspects of the Carthusian rite as a phenomenon of centralized liturgy and its musical component. |
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