In the footsteps of the Masaryk's Bible

Summary: The contribution looks at the provenance history of an early printed book held by the National Library of the Czech Republic under the shelfmark 54 S 284. It is the so called Halle Bible printed in Halle in the Czech language in 1745. The book, notable for the design of its modern binding with regional folklore motifs, was originally owned by the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who received it in 1930 as a present on his 80th birthday. The long and sometime cumbersome journey of the Bible from the donor – the Bohemian Brethren in a South Moravian village of Hrubá Vrbka – and its subsequent placement in the Museum of Masaryk’s Gifts, until its final location in the Department of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books of the National Library of the Czech Republic, is traced on the basis of provenance inscriptions and markings in the Bible itself as well as information gained by research in archival documents in several institutions.

Keywords: bibliology, early printed books, Halle Bible, Hrubá Vrbka, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937), The Institute of T. G. Masaryk, National and University Library in Prague

Mgr. David Mach / Národní knihovna České republiky (National library of the Czech Republic), Klementinum 190, 110 00 Praha 1