Unknown Hymnal of the Bernardine Order in Radom Preserved in the Diocesan Library in Sandomierz. The Content of the Manuscript

This article is dedicated to an unknown hymnal which was discovered in the Diocesan Library in Sandomierz.
It belonged earlier to the Bernardine Order in Radom. After the liquidation of the order in 1864, the
hymnal arrived at Sandomierz together with the library of Franciscan Brothers Observantines.
The study focuses on the content of this manuscript, dating back from the end of the seventeenth century,
in order to show its uniqueness against the background of a couple of other preserved Bernardine
hymnals.
This discovered manuscript contains 164 works (some in fragments), a number of them with musical
notes. The material includes literary works from the fifteenth until the eighteenth century. The most
numerous in the collection are carols and songs about the Blessed Virgin. There are also Advent songs,
Easter songs, songs about saints and picaresque songs. The texts in the manuscript are written in Latin
and Polish; some of them are anonymous, while others were written by well-known authors (e.g. Jan
Kochanowski’s psalms, religious works by Andrzej Krzycki, Jan Żabczyc and S. S. Jagodyński).
The content of the manuscript corresponds with the contents of other Bernardine hymnals from the
16th century: the Kórnik hymnal and the Puławy hymnal. Additionally, it includes unknown works or
those which so far have been known only from single records. The Bernardine hymnal from Radom is
important evidence in the history of Bernardine songs in the Polish language. It extends our knowledge
by new editions of medieval works, e.g. Skarga umierającego [Lament of a Dying Man] or Satyra na leniwych chłopów [A Satire on Lazy Peasants].