550 Years of the Czech Book Printing

In the spring of 2026 passed the 550 years of the Czech book printing in our country. The first printed book, the Latin Statutes of Archbishop Arnošt of Pardubice, was printed in Pilsen on April 26, 1476. Based on this first edition, the anonymous Pilsen printer was given the nickname “Printer of Arnošt’s Statutes.” The National Library will display a Clementine copy of the Statutes in a special display case. On approximately two accompanying panels, it will briefly present the activities of the first printing press, which operated in Pilsen until around the late 1480s. Only two other surviving copies of the Statutes—from the library of the Metropolitan Chapter in Prague and the Library of Congress in Washington—will be presented in digital form on screens.

The commemoration of the 550th anniversary of the first printed book in Bohemia does not focus solely on the specific 1476 printing of Arnošt’s Statutes. Rather, it aims to highlight the other publications produced by the oldest domestic printing house and its pioneering role in both Czech-language and Bohemic book printing. In addition to the Statutes themselves, the printer of Arnošt’s Statutes also published, for example, the Trojan Chronicle, the New Testament, and others. Most of these titles, or at least their genres, were later published (between 1501 and 1800) in later editions. The panel exhibition will present the most interesting of these and outline the historical context of their creation.