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.
This study focuses on the discovery of iron components of a wheellock pistol found to the south of Hradec nad Moravicí on the route of a former historical road that linked Opava with Moravia. The find consists of an octagonalsection barrel with a lead projectile and a lock plate with an almost complete lock mechanism. The keys to dating the find and determining its provenance are not only the shape of the barrel, but primarily the design of the wheellock mechanism and the shapes of several of its components. Based on the shape of the dog, the manner in which the lock plate was fixed into the wooden body of the pistol, and particularly the existence of an internal dog leaf spring, the pistol can with a high degree of probability be identified as a product of one of the gunsmiths’ workshops in the German towns of Braunschweig or Goslar during the 1570s or 1580s. The find from Hradec nad Moravicí adds to the group of archaeological discoveries of European and North American firearms with wheellock mechanisms, and the study provides a selective overview of this group.