Abstract: Digitising of seals from the Archives of the Bohemian Crown

The current status of a new research project at the National Archives in Prague

By Jitka Křečková and Kateřina Zenklová

Abstract to the lecture of Jitka Křečková and Kateřina Zenklová on 15th February 2016

The Archives of the Bohemian Crown (Archiv České koruny, AČK) is the most important archival holding in the Czech Republic, because it contains the oldest documents of the old Bohemian state – documents of Bohemian monarchs and estates.

Charters from this archival holding have already been digitised and they are available at www.monasterium.net, but seals are not clearly visible at these photos. Sigillography is nowadays very popular among researchers, so the lack of opportunity to study seals of The Archives of the Bohemian Crown is a big issue. Due to safety precaution the charters are stored in melinex folios in a special safe in the first department of the National Archives in Prague. Most of the seals have been fixed in a special melinex cases, and they are not available for researchers to study directly. Therefore we have decided to digitise the seals, and add these photos to already existing digitised charters on monasterium.

In the Czech Republic there is also a nation-wide catalogue of seals, seal matrices and carts being created, so we would like to include information about seals of The Archive of the Bohemian Crown from this database as a description to photos on monasterium. The database contains information about the seal itself and its owner. There are approximately 4000 seals from 1158 to 1620. So far we have digitized seals up to year 1360 (1353 seals). These seals belonged to Czech and foreign monarchs (mostly German, Silesian and French), nobility, popes, clergymen, church institutions, and cities.

Digitising of seals from this archival holding is important not only for historical research, but also for preserving the seals.

Jitka Křečková and  Kateřina Zenklová are archivists of the National Archives in Prague and coordinators of the digitization project of the charters seals in Archives of the Bohemian Crown.

Foto: Goldene Bulle Kaiser Friedrichs II, 1212, NA, AČK, Inv. No. 2