Dorobek rękopiśmienny śląskich klasztorów żeńskich (XIII-XVIII w.)

Abstract

Nunnery movement in Silesia started in the very beginning of the 13th century. At first there came Cistercian nuns to Trzebnica in 1202 and then Norbertian nuns to Rybnik a year later, from where they were moved to Czarnowąsy. By the end of the 14th century there came to an existence thirteen other monasteries representing three general kinds of European monasticism: Beggary, Canonical and Benedictine convents. It had to be a library in every cloister, since the nuns were to use books during prayers and for spiritual reading. They would buy the manuscripts or get them as a gift, in some convents there existed scriptoria. We can be sure that Franciscan nuns in Wroclaw had their own scriptorium already in the 14th century, Benedictine nuns could produce their books in the 17th century and Cistercian nuns in the 18th century. Unfortunately the immense part of Silesian nunneries property of manuscript books has been lost. Some of them dispersed already during the Middle Ages cause to many wars and other cataclysms, the other pieces were lost during the secularisation action in 1810-12. Nowadays we cannot point in what conditions the library of Dominican nuns disappeared, the ones of Magdalene nuns in Szprotawa and Lubań, Benedictines in Strzegom and Lubomierz. We dispose only one manuscript owned by Augustian nuns in Wroclaw in the 18th century and one by those in Nowogrodziec. We do not have any work of Norbertian nuns from Czamowąsy since their library must have been lost during the first decades of the 19th century. The other convents lost 90 percent of their manuscript property: we can point only 20 books of Franciscan nuns in Wrocław, 13 ones belonged to Benedictines in Legnica, and 60 pieces taken from Trzebnica. Most of the books are liturgical manuscripts, the oldest ones derive from the 12th century. Franciscan nuns in Wroclaw owned and most probably prepared themselves some pieces of hagiography and history of their convent in the Middle Ages. They provided also a catalogue of priories. The Cistercian nuns ordered to prepare similar work in the end of the 18th century in Lubiąż. The Silesian nunneries did not use to prepare and gather many manuscript books. In the comparison with men s monastic movement they were not interested in studying or using books for other activities than God service. That is the reason we dispose mostly liturgical manuscripts and only few examples of cloister historiography and saints legends. Still we hope to find some more works among those that are not signed or included in the Library of Wrocław University catalogue.