The medieval manuscripts of St. Mary’s Church Library ( Biblioteka Mariacka) are the oldest part of the collections of the Gdansk Library, with some items dating back to the 12th century. In view of their topics and history, they provide a priceless testimony to the history of Pomerania. The value of the manuscripts lies not only in their contents and ornamentation, but also in the fact that they include parchment documents bound by Gdansk bookbinders, which have survived in an excellent condition. The uniqueness of the collection was confirmed by the missal Missale secundum notulam dominorum Teutonicorum (Ms. Mar. F 332) being entered on UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” Polish National Register in 2016.
After 1921, not a single study discussing the provenance of books kept in St. Mary’s Church Library was written. This paper is an attempt to partially fill in the gap – to indicate the scribes and owners of the most valuable manuscripts. Among the latter, special attention should be devoted to clergymen connected with St. Mary’s church: Andreas Slommow, Heinrich Calow, and Johannes Zager, a lawyer Nicolaus Velan, and a scribe Johannes Rasoris from Nidzica.
For the purposes of this article, books kept by the Library were divided into sections: theology, philosophy, law and medicine; manuscripts related to the Teutonic Order were also given a separate section. Such a division may help the readers use the library holdings. The text also discusses the most important wartime losses.

After 1945, the Gdańsk Library became a treasury for the surviving collections of Po-meranian libraries liquidated during and after the Second World War. The safeguarded manuscripts included an anonymous notebook – a diary describing the route of a summer trip through Eastern Lesser Poland in 1926 (Ms. 5872). A detailed analysis of diary entries made it possible to identify the author – a landowner, Maria Chełmicka, née Wybicka (1901-1968).
The programme of Maria Chełmicka’s trip was based on visiting castles and palaces constituting a priceless heritage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as well as temples characteristic for Eastern Lesser Poland (churches of various Christian denomi-nations, including the Orthodox Church, and Jewish synagogues). The description of the state of the historical buildings of the time, both the ones which are currently in ruin and the ones restored by Ukrainian authorities after 1991, is of a timeless value. The notebook is also a precious source familiarising readers with the realities of sightseeing trips of the time. One of the most interesting fragments of the diary is a description of a hike along the mountain range of Chornohora and the tourist infrastructure on the routes leading to its highest peak of Hoverla.