Unknown Medieval Fragments in German from the Ludwik Zalewski Collection at the Polish National Library, Warsaw

Abstract

Among others, the Polish National Library possess a collection (MS 8098 IV) encompassing parchment fragments extracted from bookbindings, which contain German texts. This collection was acquired from the family of the deceased bibliophile from Lublin, Father Ludwik Zalewski. The collection consists of eleven parchment leaves, six of which form three bifolia, the other five being small fragments. The collection is known to historians, chiefly due to two of the bifolia, which contain fragments of an Old Saxon translation of  the Psalms (Altsächsiche Psalmen). The rest of the fragments, dated chiefly by the author to the fourteenth century, are also of interest. J. Kaliszuk identifies them as belonging to: Der Welsche Gast by Thomasin von Zerklaere, the Christherre-Chronik and the Livländische Reimchronik. The author also demonstrates that this collection was put together by L. Zalewski, hence there is no possibility of tracing the provenance of individual fragments. The article is supplemented by two appendices, the first with codicological descriptions of the complete collection, and the second containing an edition of the letter from Stanisław Tomkowicz, an art historian from Cracow, to Ludwik Zalewski, written in 1916, concerning the fragments in question.