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Crux de Telcz (1434-1504): Scribe, collector and author

Publication at Central Library of Charles University, Faculty of Arts |
2020

Abstract

This volume is the first volume dedicated to Crux of Telč (24.12.1434 - 25.3.1504) - a scribe from the Late Middle Ages, whose resolute efforts preserved a large body of texts. The volume presents a detailed biography (including his newly discovered date of birth and the hypothesis that his name was not Oldřich) assembled from more than 160 colophons in the copies he made of various texts and from other sources.

It also contains an overview of his "library" - a collection of fifty-two manuscripts with his scribal interventions, among which are fifteen volumes that were not previously linked to Crux. Crux intervened in his manuscripts in a number of ways: he wrote marginalia, corrections, indexes and contents.

He also obtained copies of other scribes' work, added glosses to volumes from the library of Augustinian can-ons in Třebo, and compiled and had a number of books bound himself. He wrote in Latin and Czech and also translated.

This collection focuses primarily on Crux's work as a copyist. Some of the texts he copied are preserved only in his exemplar, while others belong to a complex manuscript tradition of a particular text.

In several cases we know the exact model he used and so it is possible to ana-lyse his approach. Some of his copies are very faithful, others more creative.

The collected case studies describing the copies of texts in various genres in Latin and Czech, and of various periods of Crux's life, offer an insight into the manuscript culture of late medieval Bohemia.