Reading for Good Health? Medical Books of the Baroque Reader Maria Ernestine of Eggenberg (1649-1719)

This study focuses on a collection of medical and other health-related literature that belonged to Princess Maria Ernestine of Eggenberg, née Schwarzenberg (1649–1719). Today, it is part of the Eggenberg book collection kept at the castle in Český Krumlov. The main aim was to reconstruct the Princess’s collection of medical books, and thereby trace the reception of medical texts of varied national and linguistic provenance by a selected representative of the Baroque nobility settled in the Czech lands. The Princess mainly collected contemporary medical literature in German, French, Italian and Latin, which predominantly came from the 17th and early 18th centuries. The books with Princess’s supralibros include not only several important 16th-century books but also the incunable of Gart der Gesundheit from 1485. The fact that her preserved medical collection in the Eggenberg library consisted of 58 catalogue units (out of a total of 68) indicates that Maria Ernestine’s interest in this area of human knowledge was highly exceptional. Furthermore, about a quarter of all surviving medical texts bear traces of an active interest in reading, thus offering a glimpse into the thought world of a particular reader and her interest in medicine and health. In the case of Maria Ernestine of Eggenberg, this was also manifested outside her own library, namely in the establishment of the castle pharmacy in Český Krumlov.