The article analyses popular prayer books preserved in regional museums of Bohemia and described in the Inventory of the 17th and 18th century manuscripts from the Museum collections in Bohemia I-II (they comprise in total 3298 manuscripts from 94 museums). After a short introduction dealing with the principal characteristics of these manuscripts (viewed partly as an instance of entrepreneurial manuscript publication), their potential scribes and the way these books were read and used as magical objects, it classifies them according to the date of origin, the language used and the gender and social status of their scribes and owners.
The case study presents the analysis of Slávo markrabství (Oh, Glory of Margraviate), a folk spiritual song celebrating St. Cyril and Methodius, the patron saints of Moravia. The song was recorded in 1906 according to oral interpretation on the village of Vnorovy in Moravia. The author investigates the relationship between function, history, and music in the document.
The article briefly summarises the history of the historical library in the convent of the Order of Preachers at St Giles’ in Prague. This is followed by a report on the grant project of an internal competition of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University the aims of which were to write scientific papers and to make a list of separately printed occasional sermons deposited in the mentioned library in archival boxes under shelf marks E II 97–461 and E III 118–255. The paper deals with the character of this collection of texts, their content, authors, and time and place of their origin. The investigation of the content of the boxes has revealed that the project may also help to specify some records in Bibliografie cizojazyčných bohemikálních tisků 1501–1800 (A Bibliography of Foreign-Language Printed Bohemica from 1501–1800; BCBT).
The article deals with the typology of Baroque frontispieces in printed books published in Bohemian and Moravian printing houses in 1618–1765, which is viewed in terms of the function of the frontispieces in printing. The paper contains a detailed analysis of the main thematic variants of frontispieces. The thematic variants are analysed with respect to the content and genre of the work concerned with the aim to determine the main marketing strategies of Bohemian and Moravian printers, publishers or booksellers in the visual promotion of their products.