Strängnäs: domkyrkobibliotek
The cathedral chapter in Strängnäs received an extensive collection of books from Bohemia and Moravia as a personal gift from Queen Christina I, as early as 1649; additional groups of books may have arrived over the course of the following years. This donation was connected to the queen’s relationship with Johannes Matthiae, Bishop of Strängnäs, who had previously served as her tutor. The book donation was substantial in scale, comprising between 1,500 and 2,000 titles, some of which were sold by the chapter to foreign buyers at a public auction in 1765. To the present day, slightly more than 1,600 titles originating from the Czech literary spoils of war have survived in the cathedral library.
In 1864, the cathedral library was affected by a fire in which only a small number of books were destroyed; however, the bindings of most volumes were severely damaged, including important provenance marks. The library remains located in its original place within the cathedral, although since 2015 it has been formally affiliated with the local branch of the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm (Roggebiblioteket).
From the perspective of identifying original provenances, the cathedral library in Strängnäs ranks among the best-documented library collections in Sweden. Basic information on the attribution of books to individual Czech libraries was already provided by the catalogue of Henrik Aminson, published shortly before the fire of 1864 and therefore often preserving unique data on provenance marks that no longer survive today. Aminson’s inventory was replaced in 2017 by a two-volume catalogue by Ragnhild Lundgren, which additionally offers detailed information on further former owners of Czech books. Electronic records of the cathedral library’s holdings, including provenance data, are also incorporated into the Swedish union catalogue Libris.