Institute of Contemporary History

This publication contains the transcriptions of two newly identified manuscripts of Czech provenance with the Latin text of the so-called Second Vatican Mythographer. The manuscript Prague, NK IX C 3 (which also seems to include a trace of the First Vatican Mythographer, hitherto extant only in the unique Vatican codex), dates to 1401 and was written by Šimon of Rokycany, who later became the rector of the University of Prague and was burned by Jan Žižka after his capture of Beroun in 1421. The second copy (Prague, NK III C 18) is anonymous and could be several years older than the first one. Transcriptions of both manuscripts are included on the CD attached to this publication together with transcriptions of four other selected manuscript of the text to facilitate further study. Many questions still remain unanswered about this piece of literary heritage, which was compiled to introduce the Middle Ages to classical mythology. The method used to prepare both editions in the book itself is rather unconventional. The main text consists in a transcription of the original wording of the manuscripts, in a form as faithful to the original as possible and free of editorial interference to give scholars an accurate image of both manuscripts. The footnotes to the text include variant readings of two older copies from the Vatican and Munich manuscripts for comparison purposes. This method was chosen to assess the relationships between the newly identified copies to the two oldest extant versions of the text. The publication remains, in places, a work in progress and does not purport to give definitive answers. It is clear that much more remains to be said about the text, which has been studied and revised since the first half of the 19th century and published in an edition by Péter Kulcsár and the Brepols publishing house in 1987.

HADRAVOVÁ, Alena: Druhý Vatikánský mytograf. Dva nově identifikované rukopisy z Národní knihovny v Praze – The Second Vatican Mythographer. Two Newly Identified Manuscripts from the National Library in Prague. Praha: Scriptorium, 2017. 372 s. + CD-ROM. ISBN 978-80-88013-48-8.