Madonna by Albrecht Dürer, that once belonged to Rudolph, and a good Tiepolo. But the most interesting part of the building is the library.
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 all 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[1] 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 if members of
- ↑ Dr. Podlaha and Mr. Sittler have in the present year (1901) published a beautifully illustrated notice of the Loretto Treasury.
159
