The Wrocław copy of the important medieval encyclopaedia of natural history and medicine Hortus Sanitatis (The Garden of Health) offers, among other things, valuable evidence for the richness of Czech intellectual life in the Renaissance. This copy and its significance will soon be presented by classical philologist Dr Antoine Haaker during his research stay at the Centre for Classical Studies of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Dr Haaker is a classical philologist from France, working at the Wrocław University Library, where he is known for his crucial role in identifying and recovering several stolen medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and valuable early printed books of major importance.
The Wrocław Copy of the Hortus Sanitatis
The Hortus Sanitatis, first printed in Latin in Mainz in 1491, survives in numerous copies. One of them is now preserved in the Wrocław University Library. This particular copy is especially remarkable for the abundance of annotations added to its margins by its Czech owners during the Renaissance. These include numerous translations of the names of rare plants, animals and insects, which may constitute a valuable source for Czech lexicography.
The Wrocław Copy of the Hortus Sanitatis / Foto: Wrocław University Library
One of the annotators, Adam Lewharticzenus of Hradec Králové, also inserted additional leaves at the beginning and end of the incunable containing a handwritten copy of his correspondence. Altogether, it comprises 26 letters as well as various historical and autobiographical notes in Latin. The material provides valuable insight into the life of a sixteenth-century burgher of Hradec Králové while also illuminating broader questions concerning education, patronage and religious history in the period.
Because Lewharticzenus maintained contacts with prominent scholars and writers, including his teacher Matouš Collinus, the poet Matouš Hozius and Vojtěch Bauzek, the first Czech to enter the Jesuit order, his letters also shed new light on certain aspects of the literary history of the Czech lands.
The Wrocław Copy of the Hortus Sanitatis, letters Collinus, letters Hosius / Foto: Wrocław University Library
Dr Antoine Haaker will present the results of his research on this Wrocław copy of the Hortus sanitatis in a lecture entitled Quid Vratislaviense exemplum Horti sanitatis anni 1491 ad cognitionem sermonis et historiae litterariae Boëmorum conferat, on 24 August at 4:30 p.m., in the meeting room of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilská 1, Prague 1.
The lecture will be delivered in Latin, a language Dr Haaker speaks fluently.
Hunting for Lost Treasures
Dr Antoine Haaker works in the Manuscripts Department of Wrocław University Library. Its collection of medieval manuscripts is the largest in Poland, and an important one in Central Europe. Among the greatest treasures of the Library are a herbal dating from the age of Charlemagne, the only surviving original copy of the oldest known map of Russia, and an illuminated copy of Homer’s Iliad, one of only three such manuscripts in the world.
After work, Antoine Haaker sometimes searches for valuable books that once belonged to the library but were subsequently lost. In addition to wartime losses and items destroyed in 1945, there are also works that disappeared under other circumstances. From time to time, such items resurface in auction-house and antiquarian bookseller catalogues.
Proving that a manuscript or printed book once belonged to the library and was not legally removed from it, however, requires careful investigation. This usually involves the gathering of documentary and bibliographical evidence, a good deal of reasoning, and a detailed physical examination of the object in order to identify traces of erased library stamps, ownership inscriptions, distinctive features of the binding, or other unique characteristics. It is a multi-stage process in which locating an item in an auction catalogue is merely the beginning of what may become a highly complex negotiation.
The Return of a Lost Manuscript and Other Works
In February 2026, Wrocław University Library recovered a fifteenth-century manuscript containing works by St Augustine. The manuscript was produced by Brother Andreas of Złotoryja at a Carthusian monastery near Legnica. It contains more than 200 leaves and five works by St Augustine, including his famous autobiography, the Confessions. Richly decorated with thirty pen-flourished initials, it is a valuable witness to the medieval written culture of Silesia.
The Augustinian texts had at some point been cut out of a larger volume and subsequently sold as a separate codex. The thief worked so cleverly, that the theft remained unnoticed for almost 40 years. He knew that librarians checked regularly whether each manuscript was on the shelf. For this reason, he did not steal an entire volume, but specifically chose a thick manuscript very poorly described in inventories and never microfilmed, and cut out only a part of it that could be sold separately, as a single volume. Neither the Wrocław librarians nor the owners of the newly formed codex of Augustine did notice anything.
Recovered a fifteenth-century manuscript containing works by St Augustine/ Foto: Pawel Piotrowski
It was Dr Antoine Haaker who first drew attention to the missing sections, established their contents on the basis of an old German publication, recognized them when they appeared on the Parisian market in 2025, and subsequently demonstrated through meticulous research that the leaves had been stolen only after the war, by which time the manuscript was already part of the collections of the University of Wrocław.
This is not Haaker’s only piece of scholarly detective work. Thanks to his efforts, the Wrocław University Library has also recovered an anthology of Turkish poetry from the age of Suleiman the Magnificent, two scarce first editions of Karl Marx, and a beautifully illuminated fifteenth-century manuscript of Cicero’s philosophical works.
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Dr Antoine Haaker is a French classical philologist. He studied Classics in his native country, Italy and the United States, before earning a doctoral degree in Wrocław, by writing a 800-page dissertation in Latin about the 17th century scholar Claudius Salmasius.
He currently works in the Manuscripts Department of Wrocław University Library, where he is known for his role in identying and recovering a number of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and valuable printed books that once belonged to the collections.
He is currently conducting research at the Centre for Classical Studies of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences as a Josef Dobrovský Fellow. His project focuses on a Wrocław copy of the Hortus sanitatis (The Garden of Health) and the evidence it provides about Czech intellectual life.
Dr. Antoine Haaker / Foto: Oleksandr Poliatovsky
