The Lost Collection of Incunabula of the Seminary Library in Płock, published by the National Library - News - The National Library

The first part of the study is an extensive introduction discussing the Seminary Library in Płock and its collection of incunabula. This is followed by the edited catalogue, which includes descriptions of 386 incunabula and 27 post-incunabula. The study also includes a provenance index, a list of glosses noted by Piekarski, a topo-typographical index and a concordance list. The publication was prepared by Professor Jolanta M. Marszalska and the Reverend Professor Waldemar Graczyk in collaboration with Dr hab. Bartłomiej Czarski of the National Library, the finished work being translated into English by Dr Elżbieta Olechowska. Graphic design is by Aleksandra Toborowicz.

Prior to the Second World War, the Seminary Library in Płock contained one of the most valuable collections of old books in Poland, including around 80 medieval manuscript codices and 422 incunabula. This collection was taken by the Germans to Königsberg in 1941, after which its fate is unknown. Only two codices returned to their original owner: a twelfth-century Bible and a thirteenth-century Pontifical. The incunabula in Płock consisted of the collections of many eminent bibliophiles: the Suffragan Bishop of Płock Piotr Lubart (1474-1522), Canon Mikołaj Bartnicki (d. 1516), Canon Albert Stanisław Brzeski of Nieborów (seventeenth century),the Bishop of Płock Piotr Dunin-Wolski (1530-90, owner of one of the largest private collections of books in Poland at the time), the Bishop of Poznań Wawrzyniec Goślicki (c. 1530-1607) and Łukasz from Wilkanów (mid-fifteenth to early sixteenth century). Noteworthy among the diocesan institutions whose books found their way into the seminary collection are the Cathedral chapter in Płock and the collegiate chapter in Pułtusk, which for centuries were important cultural and intellectual centres in the diocese. The Płock collection of incunabula was further augmented by copies from monastery libraries, including those of the Benedictines in Płock, the Bernardines in Przasnysz, Ratów and Skępem, the Dominicans in Płock and the Jesuits in Płock and Pułtusk.

The new publication mainly uses the register drawn up by Kazimierz Piekarski in 1937, part of a wider campaign to create inventories of the most important Polish libraries before the War. Some 32 such register books survive, devoted to various institutions. After the War, this register became the most important source of information about the Płock incunabula. Piekarski logged each item by hand, giving the author and title of the work, and he also attempted to read the lists of owners in individual volumes and wrote a cursory description of the bindings. In addition, he noted down the former catalogue numbers of the printed works from the fifteenth century. To many of these descriptions he appended his own comments relating to the state of preservation of the book, missing pages and so on, plus details of the sixteenth-century printed works bound together with the incunabula. The authors of the current publication have compared Piekarski's data with the latest research on incunabula, resulting in a modern study that adds to our knowledge of the history of old Polish books.

Publication of the catalogue was partly financed by the Institute De Republica.

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