Franciscan Archives and Library, Kamnik
Background
Founded in 1493 and built in 1495, the Franciscan Monastery in Kamnik was under Austrian administration until 1683 and under Bosnian-Croatian administration from 1727. The building was an educational institution and today’s building retains its Seraphim College. The building has been restored together with the old library and archives.
P. Donat Valvasor Library
First books were brought to the monastery in 1492, while Franciscans started systematic work on library collection in 1627. The library contains 10,000 units, at least 25 of which are original incunabula from the period 1445–1501. The library also contains around 3,000 books dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. The collection is ordered according to the catalogue from the year 1760. The library has been rearranged by Dr. Jaro Dolar.
Original prints include the translation of the Pentateuch (the first part of the Bible with the five books of Moses) from 1578 (one of only six examples in the world) by Jurij Dalmatin who in 1584 in Wittenberg published the integral translation of the Bible. The Library preserves one of the Dalmatin's Bibles which includes his preword (during the Reformation period the text was excluded from most of the editions).
The library preserves also the documents by a Franciscan friar Stanislav Škrabec (1844-1918), a Slovene linguist and writer, and The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola by Janez Vajkard Valvasor.
The library contains also several books on history, medicine, alchimy, and geography.
Archives
The archives consist mainly of birth, death and marriage records. Older documents are preserved at the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (ARS).
See also
- Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (ARS)
- Franciscan Archives and Library, Ljubljana
- Franciscan Archives and Library, Novo Mesto