Codex Vyssegradensis - St. Wenceslaus in the initial

Codex Vyssegradensis (signature XIV A 13) is perhaps the most important and valuable manuscript kept in the Czech Republic. Due to the hypothesis of scholars that it was intended for the royal coronation of Vratislav II (or for its later commemoration), which took place on 15 June 1086, it is sometimes ranked among the Czech crown jewels. The codex was named after the provenance note "de Wisegrad" on fol. 109r from the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. According to the current state of knowledge, this gospel was written in one of the Bavarian monastic scriptoria influenced by the book culture of the Reich. It is part of a larger, relatively homogeneous group of manuscripts (one of which is now housed in the Prague Chapter Library and two others in Poland) characterised by elaborate figural decoration. It involved three painters and an assistant to the first of them. They drew on a fairly wide repertoire of designs. A comparative analysis demonstrates the uniqueness of the subjects in many cases. The manuscript was probably commissioned by a Bohemian Benedictine monastery. Period of creation: ca. 1070-1086