Staročeské biblické prology: textové dochování a výběr výchozího rukopisu pro kritickou edici

On the turn of the 14th century, a collection of Latin prologues to the individual Bible books was translated into Czech by an unknown author. This translation has been preserved in its entirety in two manuscripts from the 15th century (the so-called Litoměřice Prologues and St. Vitus Metropolitan Chapter Prologues). Some of the prologues can also be found in some manuscripts and incunabula of the so-called second, third and fourth redactions of the Old Czech Bible. The first part of the paper presents the topic and summarises the results of previous investigation, the second part compares the contents and readings of both manuscript collections of the Prologues and deals with the criteria for choosing the manuscript to be used as a primary text for the future critical edition. The authors conclude that the text of the Litoměřice Prologues is the preferable one, not least because this manuscript is older, being a direct source of the second manuscript.