THE HOSPITAL AND SPITAL KIRCHE (HEILIGGEIST KIRCHE), founded by Konrad Gross, which we have already mentioned (p. 30). In the courtyard of the hospital may be seen the chapel founded by Georg Ketzel after the great epidemic in 1437. It is built in imitation of the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. East of the Spital Kirche stands the handsome MOORISH SYNAGOGUE by Wolf. Since Nuremberg was from early days both pious and comparatively secure, she was naturally one of the first places in Germany where the mendicant friars settled and founded monasteries. The earliest of these was the Augustiner Kloster (beginning of the thirteenth century). The Franciscan Monastery, or Barfüsser Kloster, was built somewhere about 1210, where now the house of the Museum Club and the buildings of the Industrial Museum stand. The Dominican Monastery, built a little later, is now used as the Public Library and Record Office (No. 4 Burgstrasse, Mon. Wed. Fri., 9-12 A.M.). Thanks chiefly to the efforts of Hieronymus Paumgärtner and Erasmus Ebner the Council formed a fine collection from the treasures--mainly manuscript--of the libraries of the various monasteries. This was placed together with the library, which the Council had itself been founding for over a hundred years, first of all in the Monastery of St. Giles, and then in 1538 in its present home. Among the MSS. are a fragment of Durer's work on the "Proportions of the Human Figure," some poems of Hans Sachs, and autograph letters of Gustavus Adolphus, Melanchthon, Luther, Lazarus Spengler, Regiomontanus, etc., besides an amusing one from Ulrich von Hutten, the Knight and Reformer, who herein congratulates an abbot on having renounced celibacy and taken unto himself a wife. But the most valuable MS. is the almost unique Hebrew _Machsor_ (1331) written on vellum. Its 1100 pages comprise a full collection of Jewish prayers, hymns, and ceremonies up to the thirteenth century. Amongst other drawings, portraits, prints, and curiosities in the library are a black silk cap worn by Luther and a drinking cup given by him to his friend Dr Justus Jonas. The portraits of the two friends adorn the cup, together with the following inscription:-- _Dat vitrum vitreo Jonæ vitrum ipse Lutherus_ _Ut vitro fragili similem se noscat uterque._ Then, beautifully written and illuminated, there is a breviary (1350?) of an English Queen with the inscription:-- La Liver du Roy de France Charles Done a Madame la Roigne D'engleterre. Among the early printed books is a copy of the "Rationale Durandi" (1459, Mainz), of "Boccaccio" (1472, Mantoni), and of the "Florentine Homer" (1488).