The volume that seems to have served as a practical guide for a teacher of young nuns has no widely used title.
The Handbook of a Teacher at the St. George’s Convent
Central Bohemia (Prague, or Ostrov) around 1410
NL Prague, I F 29, fols. 35v–36r
The volume that seems to have served as a practical guide for a teacher of young nuns has no widely used title. Its main part consists of the Latin text of St. Benedict’s Rule adapted to the feminine gender and provided with an extensive commentary, which in some places also contains words or sentences in Czech. The remaining shorter texts and excerpts, found at the beginning of the manuscript, encourage readers to properly experience life in a convent.
We know from the included commentary on the Rule that the book was written only a few years before the outbreak of the Hussite Wars for “the virgin Elžka“ (most likely Eliška of Wallenstein), who lived as a Benedictine nun in the Convent of St. George at Prague Castle. In addition to the obvious participation in divine services and prayers, her main tasks were to take care of the convent library and educate the girls who were going to spend their whole lives behind the walls of the convent. It was Elžka’s role in educating future nuns that probably led to the creation of the surviving book. It was written by Martin of Vyšehrad in his own hand. He regularly visited the convent as the confessor of the sisters, and lived as a Benedictine monk in the Ostrov monastery near the confluence of the Vltava and Sázava rivers. He had the book bound in a popular bookbinding workshop, which was the first to use blind tooling in Prague at the beginning of the 15th century. The subsequent fate of this codex remains unknown. At the end of the Middle Ages, it was kept in the Břevnov Monastery. It found its way to the Klementinum at the end of the 18th century, probably from one of the dissolved monastery libraries.
We can see the beginning of the Rule of St. Benedict on the open double leaf. On the right, it is introduced by the red heading Incipit prologus (“The prologue begins“). The introductory sentence, obviously already adapted for women, follows below it with an emphasized first letter: O filia, ausculta precepta magistri (“Oh daughter, listen to the teacher´s commands”). The large line spacing allowed Martin to write short explanatory notes (glosses) between the lines: most often Latin synonyms, but also Czech equivalents. The entire page is framed by a more detailed commentary. References to quoted passages from the Rule or to the Bible verses are underlined in red. At the top left, the overview of the Rule’s contents, organised by chpaters, comes to an end. Martin finally filled in the remaining space with another commentary with references to the Bible in the left margin.
The digital copy of the manuscript is available here >>