Hussite Bible - Munich Codex

The Hussite Bible – Munich Codex is the oldest object in the Hungarian manuscript collection of the Bavarian State Library. Created in 1466 in Târgu Trotuș in present-day Romania, the codex consists of a calendar written on parchment folios and the oldest known translation of the Gospels into Hungarian – part of the so-called Hussite Bible. This important section of the manuscript was written down on paper by György Németi. It is one of the few surviving copies of the Hungarian Bible translation by Tamás Pécsi and Bálint Újlaki, which was produced around 1436/1439 under the influence of Jan Hus's reformist ideas. Only two other fragments of it are known: excerpts from the Old Testament in the so-called Vienna Codex in Budapest and the 150 psalms in the so-called Apor Codex in Sfântu Gheorghe. However, the Hussite Bible is not only an important milestone in the context of Bible translations and the Reformation, but also a remarkable monument to the Hungarian language. For the first time, Jan Hus's diacritical marks were used in the text to represent specific phonemes with Latin letters.