It occupies several halls, in one of which are the very handsome bookshelves that were brought here from the suppressed Monastery of Klosterbruck. In one hall we see over the doors small shelves with wire grating, in which the books condemned by the Index, but which the monks read by special permission, were formerly contained. The library is very rich in Oriental MSS., incunables and early printed Bibles; among these is the priceless Utraquist Bohemian Bible, printed at Venice, the first edition of the celebrated Bible of Kralice, and a rare copy of the Biblia Pollyglotta Briani Waltoni in Latin, Hebrew, Samaritan, Greek, Chaldæan, Syrian, Arabic, Æthiopian and Persian. Though printed in London in 1657, it is dedicated to King Charles II. The view from the gardens of the Strahov Monastery is one of the finest in Prague.
On the left bank of the river also is the Capuchin Monastery on the Loretto Place and the church dedicated to St. Mary, which adjoins it. The buildings occupy the spot where the town residences of several Protestant nobles stood who were exiled after the Battle of the White Mountain. Princess Catherine of Lobkovic purchased the ground in 1625 and built here a chapel in imitation of the Santo Casa, and a treasury[46] which is the most valuable in Bohemia, and is far more interesting than the better known treasury of St. Vitus’s Cathedral. It consists mainly of donations of the seventeenth century, and most of the contents are in the rococo style.
‘The treasury was first founded by Catherine of Lobkovic, and was enriched by gifts of members of almost all the great Bohemian families. A crucifix, the gift of Cardinal Harrach, and a monstrance—said to contain 6580 diamonds—a foundation of Countess Kolovrat, are amongst the most interesting objects. The treasury contains also a very fine picture of the Madonna and Child, attributed in the catalogue to Albrecht Dürer, and said to have formed part of Rudolph collection.[47] It is more probably a work of Adrian of Utrecht.’
The monastery was founded somewhat later, and the Church of St. Mary was built in 1661, and greatly enlarged by Countess Margaret of Waldstein in 1718.
On the right bank of the Vltava in the Vysehrad Street is the Emaus Monastery and Church of the Benedictines. It was founded in 1347 by Charles IV. to take the place of the ancient Slavic monastery of St. Prokop on the Sazava,[48] where the Greek or Slavic ritual, which in Bohemia is more ancient than that of Rome, had been used. Charles had obtained the consent of Pope Clement VI. for his new foundation principally by stating that there were in Bohemia many dissidents and unbelieving men who, when the Gospel was expounded and preached to them in Latin, did not heed it, but who might be guided to the Christian faith by men of their own race. This foundation, as Palacky tells us, was, next to the University, the one that interested King Charles most. On his summons many Slavic monks from Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia assembled in the new monastery. Charles obtained for them the right of using the Slavonic language for their ecclesiastical functions, and employing the Cyrillic alphabet. The monastery possessed a valuable collection of MSS.
