About the discovery of a copy of the "Pſalter Dauidou" (1566) by Primož Trubar

Abstract

In the summer of 1990 a copy of Trubar's Pſalter Dauidou was discovered among the library resources of Tartu University in the collection Bibliotheca Bergmannae No 255. This copy came to Tartu in 1796 from the collection of Johannes Breitkopf of Leipzig. This is the twelfth known copy of Trubar's book. The present paper gives a detailed description of the Tartu copy to compare with the texts of the other extant copies.

According to B. Berčič (1968), there are 11 copies of the Pſalter Dauidou by Primož Trubar (four copies in Slovenia, three in Germany, two in Switzerland, one in Slovakia, one in the Czech Republic). In the summer of 1990 we discovered the twelfth copy in the Tartu University Scientific Library. The book is well preserved. The registration list reveals that the book has never been checked out. This refers to the collection Bibliotheca Bergmannae No 255 (which is now in the Department of Manuscripts). According to a note made on the title page the book came from the Johannes Breitkopf collection in 1796. The article gives a detailed description of the copy: besides its full name, all parts are described with their beginnings and ends, so that it is possible to compare the texts of the Tartu copy with the other eleven extant copies and identify whether or not there are some textual differences between them.

With regard to South Slavic Protestant editions of the 16th century, aside from the Pſalter Dauidou, a Cyrillic copy of the Artikuli (1562), translated by the Croatian Protestants Stipan Konzul and Anton Dalmatin, was also discovered.