Zittau missals
The seven Zittau missals are leather-bound parchment manuscripts from the 15th and 16th centuries. They contain numerous colorful book paintings and are in the holdings of the Christian Weise Library in Zittau .
The oldest manuscripts in the Christian Weise library include three Bohemian missals. They are missals of the Archdiocese of Prague from 1410 onwards. They were brought to the Franciscan monastery in Zittau in 1421 after the Prague cathedral chapter fled from the Hussites and took up residence in the monastery belonging to the archdiocese on the Oybin mountain near the Upper Lusatian town of Zittau . Even after the canons returned to Prague in 1437, the missals remained in the liturgical use of the Zittau monastery.
Four other missals, the German or Lusatian missals, were made between 1435 and 1512 in the illumination of the Franciscan monastery in Zittau.
After the secularization of the Franciscan monastery, the missals passed into the possession of the regional commander of the Order of St. John . After their dissolution they came into municipal possession. They were initially kept in the Johanniskirche , where they survived the destruction of Zittau in 1757 unscathed. At the beginning of the 19th century they were given to the Zittau city library.
Between 1986 and 1987, one of the Bohemian missals inexplicably disappeared from the library. It is believed that the theft was organized by the GDR foreign exchange procurement company Commercial Coordination .
In 1997, the remaining six missals were presented together for the first time in an exhibition in the Zittau City Museum. In 1999, thanks to a donation from the Dresden-Meißen diocese, one of the missals (sign. A II) from 1500 could be restored.
The missing missal (Sign. A VII) from 1415 was put up for auction in 1999 at a Hessian auction house. After the Löbau-Zittau district was successful in its lawsuit for publication, the work has been in the possession of the Christian-Weise-Bibliothek Zittau (CWBZ) again since August 2002.
See also
literature
- Uwe Kahl: On the history of the transmission of the missals in Zittau , in: Library journal of the CWBZ, issue 2, 1998
- Peter Behnke and Uwe Kahl: Valuable Zittau Missal restored , in: CWBZ Library Journal, Issue 9, 1999
- Silke Birk: Publication of cultural assets - Landkreis Löbau-Zittau wins legal dispute against an auction house , in: Sächsisches Archivblatt, issue 1, 2003 Sächsisches Archivblatt 1/2003 ( Memento from March 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive )