Hebraica and Judaica at the Research Library in Olomouc
Hebraica and Judaica at the Research Library in Olomouc

Summary/Abstract: Although the collection of Hebraica and Judaica at the Vìdecká knihovna v Olomouci [Research Library in Olomouc] (VKOL) is not the result of a focused collecting policy, there is much of interest to be found in it. An initial glance at the collection reveals that it can be divided into two groups: the first includes books in Hebrew or Yiddish and/or Latin, German or Italian that were produced by Christian printers for non-Jews interested in the language or religion and history of the Jews (Christian Hebraica and Judaica); the second includes Hebrew and Yiddish books from Jewish printing presses that were oriented towards Jewish readers (for the sake of brevity, I shall refer to these as ‘Jewish imprints’). These two groups of books and readers seldom met, and if they did, then this was often motivated by other than usual reading interest. A large portion of the books in question have been kept in the library since the eighteenth century, some of them even longer. The Christian Hebraica and Judaica – providing the original owner is known from the ex-libris or owner’s notes – come from the libraries of suppressed monasteries and religious educational institutions in Moravia and provide evidence of the interests of theologians and students of theology in Hebrew, Bible and Jewish studies. The Jewish imprints form a very specific group. For the most part, these books were, without doubt, confiscated for censorship reasons. Many of them lack owner’s notes and were probably confiscated shortly after publication during attempts to import them into Bohemia or Moravia. A smaller portion of the books contain notes by their Jewish owners and may have been confiscated either during house searches, as they were being brought into the country or during attempts to sell them. For that matter, some of the sixteenth-century humanist books may also have been confiscated – this time from Christian owners – because of their content and/or their author. Notes in Latin on the margins of highlighted passages in some Jewish imprints indicate that these books were read by Christians, probably among the local Hebraists. Nonetheless, it is precisely because of censorship action that several very rare Hebrew imprints have been preserved at VKOL; they may not have survived to the present day in their original Jewish milieu and would probably have worn away and ended up in a Moravian synagogue’s genizah. Otherwise, of course, censorship is responsible for immense losses as far as individual copies and sometimes entire print runs of books are concerned. In addition to imprints, the library also owns three manuscripts. I shall discuss these first before briefly focusing on the collection of Christian Hebraica and finally turning my attention to imprints that were intended for the Jewish public.

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