KBR (Royal Library of Belgium)
KBR (The Royal Library) is the national scientific library of Belgium and collects all Belgian publications. A unique and inspiring place with a wealth of outstanding knowledge — all protected and made accessible for you. The institution preserves, manages and studies more than 8 million documents, a rich cultural and historical heritage. KBR provides access to all information in its collections, facilitates research and offers a broad cultural experience. KBR has been digitising its collections for over ten years, not only for conservation purposes, but also for the online dissemination of these collections. You can browse our digitised collection via https://www.kbr.be/en/
Online Access to the Irish manuscripts of the Irish College in Leuven, now held in the Royal Library of Belgium is a co-operative project between the Leuven Centre for Irish Studies (KU Leuven), the Royal Library of Belgium, the Embassy of Ireland to the Kingdom of Belgium and Irish Script on Screen (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies).
The manuscripts were brought in the seventeenth century to St Anthony's College of the Irish Franciscans in Leuven, a college that became a major centre of Irish culture and intellectual endeavor during that turbulent century, being responsible for the planning and execution of many cultural projects and the publication of several books in Irish. Hundreds of Irish seminarians came to Leuven to study for the priesthood, when it was forbidden in Ireland. The manuscripts, some of them in Mícheál Ó Cléirigh‘s own hand, comprise literary, historical and hagiographic content. When the influence of the French Revolution reached Leuven the collections were dispersed, some of them to the Royal Library and others eventually finding their way through various different Franciscan houses to their present home in University College Dublin. Through this initiative the Brussels manuscripts can now be digitally re-united with the rest of the Franciscan collection, already digitised as part of the ISOS project.
The digitization was organized by the Leuven Centre for Irish Studies, and funded by the Irish Embassy in Belgium. The photography was carried out by the digitization laboratory of KU Leuven Libraries, whose IT service, LIBIS, also takes care of long-term preservation.
LCIS is a multidisciplinary research institute of the KU Leuven, focusing on the topic of Ireland in Europe, undertaking research into the Humanities (literature, history, art, philosophy, theology…), Peace and Transformative Growth (trauma studies, political sciences), and International Economics and International Business. LCIS is also the seat of the European Federation of Centres and Associations of Irish Studies (EFACIS).
Catalogue Descriptions and Conventions:
The codicological metadata accompanying the digital images are supplied through ISOS by Professor Pádraig A. Breatnach, School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, from his Catalogue of manuscripts in the Irish language in the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique / Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België (in progress). They comprise summary particulars including notice of previous descriptions and detailed indexes of contents.
The form of entries indexed is as in manuscript, save that scribal abbreviations are normally expanded and names of persons and places capitalised. Bibliographical references are supplied with entries as a rule only where the copy transmitted in the present collection has been edited or collated.
See Link: Online Access to KBR Manuscripts in the Irish Language. Contact address: pbreatnach@celt.dias.ie (December 2019)
