The half-popular compositions traditionally referred to as broadside ballads are a specific type of source. Some of them reflect Biblical, legendary and historical events in Egypt and the Near East. Although the factual importance of such ballads in not great, they have some informative value, because their texts mirror the attitudes and opinions of the lower social classes, in this case clearly influenced by the antithesis of Christianity and Islam, or also Judaism. They show that the authors of broadside ballads kept alive deep-rooted stereotypes, mainly the stereotype of Turks as pagans and tyrants.
The article is a continuation of the author’s paper given at the professional conference on historical collections in Olomouc in 2013, which was published in the proceedings of the conference, Bibliotheca Antiqua.1 The author has corrected and expanded some of the data on the life story of Count Pötting on the basis of information from Pötting’s handwritten
Diary from 1664–1674 (Diario del conde de Pötting, embajador del Sacro Imperio en Madrid). She provides an overview of the books that are known to have formed part of Pötting’s book collection (26 manuscripts, mostly codices comprising more units, and 46 printed books from the 16th and 17th centuries have been recorded as yet).