Bernardine Monastery Library

Origins of the actual institution date back to the creation of the Bernardine library in 1488, which stood at the location of today's Church of Our Lady Queen of Peace. In 1591, Wojciech Język from Sambir, then Bernardine guardian, expanded the monastery and built a new brick room for the library.

The monastery had organised manuscripts into several disciplines:

• Theology, including works by Catholic authors and representatives of the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation;
• Philosophy, with works from ancient authors, scholastics, Renaissance philosophers (Jan of Stobnica, Michał Falkener);
• History, encompassing Roman classics works.

In addition, the library had books dealing with law, geography, mathematics, astronomy, medical science, mining and metallurgy. Stocks comprised also historical incunables, colorfully decorated by Bernardine brother Aleksi, famous for his adorning of antiphonary books.

Most of the books come from purchase or donations, some have been brought by monks travelling abroad (Dionizy Szyjka, Jan of Kościan, Melchior Dębiński, Wawrzyniec of Słupca and others).

In 1574, the starost of Bydgoszcz Jan Kościelecki secured the maintenance of the library by assuring a fixed amount of income from a local sawmill. In 1631, Jan Synodoniusz of Pakość, dying chaplain of the Church of the Holy cross in Bydgoszcz (now gone), bequeathed to the library a sizable collection of books. Likewise the son of Andrzej Rozrażewski, founder of the Poor Clares monastery, gave many Venetian incunables. Other well-known donators include: governor of Kcynia Piotr Czarnkowski (ca 1620), governor of Solec Antoni Grasiński, Bydgoszcz Mayor Wojciech Łochowski or town's woman Elżbieta Szychowa.

The library, its adjoined scriptorium and the Bernardine academic study of philosophy helped to develop a broader intellectual environment in the city. One of the famous professor of the philosophy was Bartłomiej of Bydgoszcz, a bernardine monk who conducted fruitful scholarship work at the local monastery, issuing the first Latin-polish dictionary in 1532.^[6] Several written chronicles written at the beginning of the 17th century by Jan of Kościan describe this fertile scholar period.^[7]

The library luckily survived the violent times of Polish history, such as the Swedish invasion (1656-1660) or the Great Northern War (1700-1721). In 1810, only 2400 volumes were left in stock; at the dissolution of the monastery in 1829, the library, then under the authority of the Head of the city police,^[4] was moved to the nearby House of Loreto's order and at the demolition of the monastery in 1838, the books have been placed in a compartment behind the main altar of the Bernardine Church of Our Lady Queen of Peace. They have been then transferred to the cathedral where they survived until 1907.

At the request of the German authorities, these old volumes have been moved to the stock of Bromberg's Municipal Library. Shortly before the reintegration of Bydgoszcz to the Polish territory in 1920, ecclesiastical authorities (among whom German priest Jan Filipiak) placed these old volumes to the Church of the Holy Trinity, for fear of losing them in the hands of the Germans leaving the city.

Municipal Library

City library was established on October 1, 1903:^[8] located initially in a building on the corner of Bernardyńska and Jagiellońska streets, it has then been housed from 1904 to 1906 at Gdańska Street 27 (at the plot where stands today Tenement Carl Meinhardt).^[9]

First library resources were offered by German private donators: historian Friedrich Ludwig Georg von Raumer, editor Heinrich Kruse and German scientific societies affiliated to the German Society of Arts and Sciences in Bromberg, mainly Historical Society from Bromberg - Netze District (German: Historische Gesellschaft für den Netzedistrikt zu Bromberg). The first director of the institution was Georg Minde-Pouet, who quickly demonstrated a real ability to acquire the funds needed for the maintenance of the library. He had the building expanded, acquiring a wing on Jana Kazimierza street.^[10]

When the building and its resources moved to the hands of Polish authorities in April 1920, the institution consisted of 75 000 volumes, of which only 300 were in Polish. Witold Bełza, the new director, (1920-1939 and 1945-1952), began to acquire more Polish books, and in 1939 the stock increased to 150 000 volumes, including:

• 15th to 18th century manuscripts and books from the former Bernardine Library;
• a collection of nearly 2 700 royal documents, privileges, decrees, manuscripts and autographs;
• the only surviving manuscript of "The Oath" donated by Feliks Nowowiejski;^[9]
• a dozen of books from Vladimir Lenin's collection in Poronin, donated by Adam Grzymała-Siedlecki.

During interwar period, the collections of the Municipal Library in Bydgoszcz were regarded as the richest on Kujawy in terms of literature.

During the occupation the library has been isolated, forbidden to be consulted. Part of the Polish-language literature was handed over for destruction, even though many books were rescued by Polish citizens working in the warehouse. The historian Michał Nycz moved many royal manuscripts away from the Nazi authorities. Some of the books were hidden in the Municipal museum or in basements of elementary schools in the suburbs of Bydgoszcz, so as not to be evacuated by German occupation forces.^[8] During World War II, 20% of the library stock have been lost, including 99 incunables.^[9]

After 1946, predominant trend was to collect scientific and popular works. The most valuable items, gathered in the Department of Special Collections, were isolated from the central database in 1953. It included among others, 1382 volumes from the Bernardine library, 4 900 items related to cartography, 972 manuscripts of artists such as Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Maria Konopnicka, Julian Krzyżanowski, Jan Matejko, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Adam Grzymała-Siedlecki, Leopold Staff, Stanisław Wyspiański and Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński. In 1957, were incorporated into this Department a collection of medals, plaques, stamps, biographical materials of regional activists, and in 1959 a series of small prints.^[11]

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the municipal library established many branches throughout the city: a new building has been planned to be erected, but the project was finally rejected and transformed to a major overhaul of the existing edifice. In the 1980s, repairs to a damaged building required to change the location of part of the stock.

In 1968, the institution has been granted a scientific department, and in 1975, the library was labelled as provincial library.^[9] In 2009, a plaque in memory of Józef Wybicki, a Polish jurist, political and military activist, has been unveiled on a wall of the Municipal Library, recalling its judicial past.^[12]