Cimelia of the Provinzialbibliothek Amberg

The Amberg Provincial Library was founded during the period of secularisation to house the books from the ecclesiastical institutions of the town and region. The selection of manuscripts presented here focuses primarily on the territorial, confessional and intellectual history of the Upper Palatinate, as it underwent considerable religious upheaval from the Reformation onwards. In addition to sources on everyday and administrative history, over 400 printed perioches (short plays written by the Jesuits) have been preserved from the Jesuit College in Amberg. The Benedictine monastery of Ensdorf handed down an extensive collection of 1500 mortuary rolls (2 Ms. 39) as well as the sketchbooks of its abbot Anselm Desing, a universal scholar of the 18th century. Rich holdings come from the Cistercian monastery of Waldsassen, and an anthology with manuscripts mainly from the field of medicine and colour recipes that were important for medieval book illumination, the so-called Amberg Malerbüchlein (Ms. 77), dates back to the late Middle Ages. Other medieval and modern manuscripts or beautifully designed incunabula come from the monasteries of Speinshart and Walderbach. Of particular note is a medieval manuscript of biblical narratives with coloured pen drawings (2 Ms. 46) and especially a well-preserved pair of globes – the terrestrial globe from 1541 and the celestial globe from 1551 – by the famous cartographer Gerhard Mercator.