Jena Code

Jena Codex, fol. 70r: cardinal crowning a prostitute with the papal tiara

The Jena Codex ( Czech Jenský kodex, also Jenaer Hussitenkodex, Latin Antithesis Christi et Antichristi) is a richly illuminated Hussite manuscript from the late Middle Ages.

history

The anthology was created around 1500 on behalf of the Prague citizen Bohuslav von Čechtice, a supporter of the Hussite Church. Soon after its creation in Bohemia, the volume came into the holdings of the "Bibliotheca Electoralis" in Wittenberg , most of which came to the Jena University Library in 1549 (signature Ms. El. F. 50b). In 1951 Wilhelm Pieck , the then President of the GDR , presented the Code to the Czechoslovak President Klement Gottwald as a state gift. Today it is in the manuscript collection of the National Museum in Prague ( call number IV B 24). In 2009 the museum published an annotated facsimile .

The code contains various Czech and Latin texts on general Christian and Hussite topics. The introductory text is in Latin, the other texts are in Czech. It includes manuscripts and an incunabula on 111 paper and 9 parchment leaves with a total of 122 illuminations. Above all, the pictures with Hussite motifs are known, such as the burning of Jan Hus (fol.38r) or the blind Jan Žižka at the head of an army (fol.76r), who in a modified form from 1970 on the Czechoslovak 20- crown - Banknote was pictured.

The tendency of the work is clearly pro-Hussite, as some illuminations show, such as a crusader with a newborn impaled (fol. 56r), a cardinal crowning a prostitute with the papal tiara (fol. 70r) or a priest killing his child (fol . 77r).

literature

Zoroslava Drobná: Jenský kodex: husitská obrazová satira z konce středověku (The Jena Codex: Hussite pictorial satire from the late Middle Ages). Odeon, Prague 1970.

Jenský kodex / The Jena Codex . Gallery, Prague 2009, ISBN 978-80-86990-96-5 (2 volumes, facsimile and commentary).

Thomas Mutschler: The Jena Code. A manuscript affair in the early GDR? . In: Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie 56, 2009, Issue 2, pp. 71–74 ( digitized version ).