The Catalogues of the Princely and Papal Libraries of the Italian Renaissance

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American Philological Association

The Catalogues of the Princely and Papal Libraries of the Italian RenaissanceAuthor(s): Dorothy M. RobathanSource: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 64 (1933),pp. 138-149Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/283163 .Accessed: 13/03/2011 14:07

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Dorothy May Robathan

XI.-The Catalogues of the Princely and Papal Librariesof the Italian Renaissance

DOROTHY M. ROBATHAN

WELLESLEY COLLEGE

This paper is based on a study of fifteenth-century inventories of the

papal and princely libraries in Italy. A comparison of the number of classi-cal manuscripts with those in the romance tongues as well as with thoseby mediaeval and humanistic writers throws light upon the literary cultureof certain communities at the time when the catalogues were drawn up.The growing interest in Greek literature is reflected in the increase innumber of manuscripts in that language in the later documents. Theeffect of the introduction of printing upon the contents of certain librariesis also significant.

To one who has any knowledge of the published inventoriesof some of the famous libraries of the fifteenth century-such asthat of the Vatican under Sixtus IV-the subject of this papermust appear overwhelming. For it is obvious that even one

catalogue consisting of more than three thousand items couldfurnish material for a whole series of articles. What, then,may we hope to gain from what would appear to be a super-ficial examination of more than a dozen inventories, repre-senting collections in Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, Pavia,Ferrara, Urbino, and Mantua?

In tracing the development of any one of these libraries

during the renaissance, a study of the extant inventories playsan important part. This paper, based on such a study, aims to

present a composite picture, by comparing the catalogues ofthese different collections, and noting significant phases in the

growthof interest in the classics. For the

purposeof this

discussion, I am including only fifteenth-century documents,referring to libraries formed by princes or the popes in Italy.

Let us consider first the nature and purpose of these lists of

manuscripts which have been brought to light in the archives

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of the communities in which we are interested. Very often

they form part of a more extensive inventory which wasdrawn up at the request of a ruler when he wished to have anitemized list of the treasures of his domain, of which the

library may have formed an inconspicuous part. Thus it isnot surprising that their dates often coincide with the timeswhen new rulers took over the reins of government. This wasnot always the case, as for example, the only extant completeinventory of the library of the Aragon kings at Naples wasdrawn up in 1481,1 at a time when King Ferdinand was in direstraits. Since he needed money to aid in repelling the Turks,who were threatening to invade his realm, he applied to aFlorentine broker for a loan, and offered as security his booksand jewels, of which an itemized list was necessary. As mightbe expected, the one that was made bears all the earmarks of a

hastily written document. The same description may be

applied to some other catalogues that have not an equallysound reason for being so carelessly constructed. All degreesof accuracy are found in these lists. Sometimes the ignoranceof the compiler is startling, as for example, in the well-knownPavia inventory of 1426,2 where we find two items labelled

uncertainly as "either Greek or Hebrew." 3In very briefest form, the entries consist of the name of the

author or merely the title of the work; in more detailed lists,both are given, as well as the incipit and the explicit. In somecatalogues 4 this latter method is varied by the substitution ofthe first words on the second folio and the last words on nextto the last folio. This device has proved very helpful in

identifying manuscripts in recent years. Another usefulidentification mark is the reference to the material on which

1 Published by H. Omont, " Inventaire de la bibliothUque de Ferdinand I

d'Aragon,"Bulletin de l'ecole des chartes LXX

(1909),456-470.

2 Published by G. d'Adda, Indagini storiche, artistiche e bibliografiche sullalibreria viscontea-sforzesca del castello di Pavia (Milan, 1875), 1-91.

3 Nos. 122 and 547.4 E.g. the private inventory of pope Calixtus III, published by E. Muentz,

Les arts h la cour des Papes pendant le XVe et le xvie siecle (Paris, 1878), 215 f.

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Dorothy M. Robathan

the work was written, as for example, in papiro, in pergameno,

while the description of the color and texture of the bindingsand of the elaborate clasps with which the codices were some-times adorned, enables us to visualize the volumes as theylooked when the inventory was made. An individual note isstruck in the 1456 Medici catalogue,5 from which we learn thatthe nature of the contents of the volumes could be judged bythe color of the bindings. For example, the manuscripts ofsacred literature were bound in blue, the grammatical works in

yellow, the poetical volumes in purple, while the historicaltomes rejoiced in covers of red. Somewhat less frequent thanthe recurrence of external details is the description of the

script in which the work was written, and when this charac-terization does occur, it is not always accurate. For instance,in the 1464 Medici catalogue,6 we are impressed at first glanceby the number of manuscripts described as litteris vetustis or

litteris antiquissimis, until we happen to observe that the samewords are applied to Leonardo Bruni's Bellum Punicum, awork which had been composed just a few years before.

Of some interest too, is a study of the order in which thecontents of the library are listed. Sometimes, as for example,in the Naples inventory already referred to, there is no definite

plan according to either language or material. This, however,is exceptional, and is due no doubt to the circumstances underwhich the catalogue was drawn up. In the other documentsthe manuscripts are sometimes grouped according to subjectmatter, regardless of the language in which they were written,as in the 1426 Pavia inventory, where volumes in Latin,Greek, French, and Italian are intermingled. But more

frequently the arrangement is that of the 1482 catalogue ofUrbino,7 where the Latin codices come first, then the Greek,

6 Published by E. Piccolomini, " Delle condizioni e delle vicende dellalibreria Medicea privata," Archivio storico italiano, ser. 3, xxi (1875), 106-112.

6 Published by E. Muentz, Les collections des M&dicis au quinzieme siecle

(Paris, 1888), 44-49.7 Published by C. Stornaiolo, Codices Urbinates Graeci (Rome, 1885), Iv-

clxxv.

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and finally those in Hebrew. When this is the plan used,

there is generally a classification, not always strictly observed,within the language division. An exception to this is noted inthe 1436 catalogue of Ferrara,8 where among the French

manuscripts, for example, we find tales of chivalry interspersedamong Bibles and translations from Latin classical authors andfrom mediaeval works.

The groups into which the contents were usually dividedare as follows: Bibles and works of a sacred nature, includingglosses, commentaries, breviaries, lives of saints, works ofchurch fathers, etc.; law, canonical and civil; philosophy;history; geography; medicine; astronomy and mathematics;poetry; grammar. Of course, some of the catalogues combineor omit some of these categories, and the order differs, but inmost of them first place is given to sacred literature.

A departure from this group system is noted in the 1495

Ferrara inventory,9 where the entries are made alphabetically.As a result, the total number of 512 is not accurate, since someworks were entered under two letters, as, for instance, the storyof the Golden Ass, translated from Lucian, appears under Aand also under F, where the title begins with Fabulae. Weobserve that the catalogue was neither exclusively by authorsnor by works, but was a combination of both. For example,Cicero's letters were entered only under E, but the de Offciiswas listed only under Tulio (sic), while under C the only entryascribed to Cicero is opera.

So much for the form of the catalogues. What light do theentries throw upon the literary culture of the communitieswhich they represent? The documents that we are con-sidering range in date from 1417 to 1495 and vary in number ofvolumes from 66 to 3650. In the first place, they give us a

check on the traditional size of the library. Take, for example,8 Published by A. Cappelli, " La biblioteca estense nella prima meta del

secolo xv," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana xiv (1889), 12-30, exceptfor the French manuscripts, which are published by Pio Rajna in Romania ii(1873), 49-58.

9 Published by G. Bertoni, La biblioteca estense ai tempi del duca Ercole I(Torino, 1903), Appendix ii, 235-252.

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Dorothy M. Robathan

the famous collection of the Dukes of Urbino which Vespasiano

da Bisticci, the well-known Florentine bibliophile, described insuch glowing terms at the end of the fifteenth century.According to this enthusiast, the Urbino library contained one

perfect copy of every work known at that time, sacred or

profane, in the original tongue or in translation.10 If our

credulity is taxed by this sweeping statement, it is furtherstrained by some of the more specific information. While we

might be inclined to accept without question the names of

Sophocles, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, the inclusion ofMenander's "complete works" has caused modern scholarsto doubt Vespasiano's veracity.1l It seems unlikely that therewas a complete copy of Menander in Urbino at this time, andthat it vanished before it could be transcribed by anyone.The two extant inventories of this library, dating from the endof the century,12 omit mention of any work of Menander,

Pausanias, the Batrachomyomachia (ascribed to Homer), or ofVegio, Gasparino, Pontano, and Tortello, all specifically named

by Vespasiano as having a place in the Urbino library.Reports have also differed concerning the size of the papal

library under Nicholas V, for contemporary estimates vary allthe way from 9000 to 600 volumes.13 That the smaller numberis more nearly correct may be judged from an examination oftwo inventories that were drawn up at the time of Nicholas'sdeath.14 In them we find listed 794 Latin and 440 Greek

codices, making a total of 1209.1510 Vespasiano da Bisticci, Le vite di uomini illustri del secolo xv, ed. by L. Frati

(Bologna, 1892), I, 297-302.11Cf. J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. by

S. G. C. Middlemore (London, 1929), 200, note 1.12 From internal evidence, which is too lengthy to produce here, it seems

certain that the Index Vetus, published by Stornaiolo, op. cit. (supra, note 7),antedates the Index of Veterano, published by C. Guasti in Giornale storico degliarchivi toscani vi (1862), 127-147; vII (1863), 46-55, 130-154. To the former Ishould assign the date 1482; to the latter, not long after 1502.

13Cf. J. Hilgers, " Zur Bibliothek Nikolaus V," Zentralblatt fur Biblio-thekswesen xIx (1902), 1-11.

14 Published by E. Muentz et P. Fabre, La bibliotheque du Vatican au xv6siecle (Paris, 1887), 48-112; 315-342.

15Cf. Hilgers, loc. cit.

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It is of course true that some catalogues misrepresent the

number of works included in the library, since often severaldifferent ones were contained in the same volume. A case in

point may be found by studying two inventories of the privatelibrary of Piero, the son of Cosimo dei Medici. In 1456 hiscollection is listed as containing 160 volumes,16 but in 1464 thetotal is given as only 128.17 A comparison of the inventoriesitem by item shows that the library suffered little change in theseven years' interval, and that the discrepancy in the totalnumbers resulted from the following facts: (1) some entries aremade twice in the earlier list; 18 (2) some authors which the1464 catalogue explicitly states are in uno volumine 19are givenseparately in that of 1456. Thus the later inventory is moreaccurate numerically for volumes, but not for works.

But these catalogues are enlightening not only concerningthe number of volumes that each library possessed, but also in

regard to the kind of literature contained in them. Theearliest list that we are considering, that of the Gonzagacollection at Mantua in 1417, contains 300 Latin manuscripts,67 French, and 32 Italian, with none in Greek.20 This is a

good-sized library for the early part of the century, and it is tobe regretted that the part of the inventory which includes theLatin manuscripts is unpublished, and my efforts to obtain

photostatic copies of it from the archives at Mantua have beenunsuccessful. We note, however, that the French codiceswere twice as many as the Italian. This indication of aculture that was French rather than Italian is also to beobserved in connection with the courts at Ferrara and Pavia.

From 1418, a year after the inventory was drawn up atMantua, we have a modest list, representing the nucleus of

16 Published by E. Piccolomini, loc. cit. (see note 5).17 Published

byE.

Muentz, op.cit. in note 6.

18 E.g. the group of six labelled volgare is repeated.19E.g. Tacitus and Valerius Maximus under historici.20W. Braghirolli, " Inventaire des manuscrits en langue francaise possedes

par Francesco Gonzaga I, capitaine de Mantoue, mort en 1407," Romania ix(1880), 498.

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Cosimo dei Medici's private collection, from which was to

spring that impressive Medici library which at the end of thecentury numbered over a thousand volumes. Although this

catalogue of Cosimo's is of slight importance numerically, for itcontains only sixty-six items,21 it is of interest for anotherreason. Less than two years before this inventory was written,Poggio had made his important discoveries at Constance, andit is significant to note that the commentary of AsconiusPedianus on Cicero, several new orations of Cicero, and

Quintilian,22 which were found at that time, are included inthis short list.

Both sons of Cosimo, Giovanni and Piero, shared theirfather's interest in collecting manuscripts, to such an extentthat between 1450 and 1460 they had a contest to see who could

acquire the better library. Unfortunately, Giovanni's inven-

tory of 1457 is not extant, but, as we have seen, Piero's library

in 1464 consisted of 128 volumes, among which there werenone in Greek and no printed books. In the next thirty years,the Medici private library had grown to 1052 volumes, ofwhich over three hundred were in the Greek tongue.23 Of the

latter, the largest group was that devoted to theology, which

comprised 85 volumes, while the smallest representation was

given to astronomy and mathematics combined, of which therewere only a dozen books. Among the Latin works, theologyalso had the largest number with 112 entries, while thegrammarians made the poorest showing, with only elevenvolumes.

But although we may marvel at the achievement of theMedici family, who before 1495 had amassed a library of over a

thousand volumes, we find ourselves wondering even more atthe industry of the Visconti princes, who had almost as large a

21Published by F. Pintor, La libreria di Cosimo dg Medici

nel1418 (Firenze,

1902), 13-15.22The manuscript of Quintilian may not, however, have contained the

complete text but the mutilated one, previously known.23 This inventory of 1495 is published by Piccolomini, op. cit. xix (1874),

116-117.

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collection in 1426.24 This library at Pavia is notable not only

for its size, but also for the fact that it contained the mostimportant group of Petrarch's manuscripts, including worksby the following authors: Claudian, Cassiodorus, Eustachius,Fulgentius, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, Victorinus, Sue-tonius, Isidore, Quintus Curtius, Quintilian, and Plato andHomer in Greek.25 These manuscripts, which are now in the

Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, are all listed in the inventoryof 1426. Of the other entries in this catalogue, about onehundred are in French, a third as many in the vernacular, twoin Greek, and the rest apparently in Latin. Of these, themediaeval and humanistic manuscripts outnumber the clas-sical, but the latter, nevertheless, present an imposing array.For example, there were more than forty manuscripts ofCicero's works, sixteen of Seneca's, and eleven of Priscian's aswell as copies in fewer numbers of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan,

Statius, Juvenal, Martianus Capella, Claudian, Macrobius,Propertius, Boethius, Terence, Persius, Lactantius, Florus,Servius, Suetonius, Vegetius, Frontinus, Apuleius, Vitruvius,Livy, Celsus, Solinus, Pliny, Eusebius, Sallust, ValeriusMaximus, Eutropius, Varro, Cato, Justin, Quintilian, andtranslations of Plato and Aristotle.

Perhaps it may seem strange that when other libraries, suchas that of the Medici, were increasing in number of manu-scripts, the next inventory of the Visconti family, drawn up in1459, should have recorded fewer volumes than its predecessor.This fact was due, no doubt, to the liberality with which theprinces loaned their literary treasures. From the registers ofloans,26 which may be studied in connection with theseinventories, it is evident that the borrowers kept the volumes,not two weeks, nor two months, but often many years, and

24Published by d'Adda, loc. cit. (supra, note 2), containing 988 items.25 Cf. P. de Nolhac, P6trarque et l'humanisme (Paris, 1907), I, 103-104.

26 Cf., for example, E. Piccolomini, " Ricordi di libri imprestati dal 1480 al1494," Archivio storico italiano xxI (1875), 282-296; G. Coggiola, " II prestitodi manoscritti della Marciana dal 1474 al 1527," Zentralblatt fir Bibliotheks-wesen xxv (1908), 47-70.

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In startling contrast to this unremarkable list is the inven-

tory that was compiled twelve years later by the humanisticscholar, Tommaso Parentucelli, then Pope Nicholas V.Using the nucleus of 340 volumes left him by Eugene IV, inthe brief period of eight years while he sat on the papal throneNicholas V increased the library to 1209 volumes, of which 414were in Greek.30 It is of interest to recall that this was thevery man who had previously evolved the famous canon forCosimo dei Medici,31 in accordance with which the libraries ofSan Marco and Fiesole, as well as those at Urbino and Pesaro,were established. But Nicholas's own library outstripped theminimum which he regarded as essential for a well-equippedcollection. Among the classical authors found in his libraryand not included in his canon are Terence, Catullus, andJuvenal.

With such rapid strides as the papal library made under this

bibliophile, we are not surprised to find that twenty yearslater, under Sixtus IV, the number of volumes reached 2527, ofwhich 770 were in Greek.32 Of those in Latin, the largestsingle group is devoted to the historians (125 volumes), wherenumerous copies of Livy consort with such mediaeval tomes asthe Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, or with thehumanistic writings of Leonardo Aretino. Of those in Greek,the largest division is a miscellaneous assortment labelledobscuriores quidam auctores ecclesiae, and the next largest isthat containing the seventy manuscripts of the orators. ButSixtus IV was not satisfied with this record-breaking achieve-ment, and in the nine years which still remained before hisdeath he added 1100 volumes, making a total of 3650.33

In examining and comparing the records of these differentcollections, we are impressed by the indications of a growing

interest in Greek. We note, for example, that in the two30Supra, note 15.31Published by G. Sforza, La patria, la famiglia e la giovinezza di Papa

Niccolo V (Lucca, 1884), Appendix A.32 Published by Muentz et Fabre, op. cit. (supra, note 14), 161-250.33Ib. 141.

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inventories of earliest date there are no Greek manuscripts

included.34 The next three, taken in chronological order,35contain two, one, and two Greek manuscripts respectively,while in Pavia and Ferrara, where we have noted a largenumber of manuscripts in the romance tongues, those in Greeknever numbered more than two copies even at the end of the

century. In the collections of the Medici and the popes,however, we have observed a steady increase of interest inHellenism. Among the Florentine circle this tendency wasstimulated by the two hundred manuscripts which JanosLascaris brought back from his two trips to Byzantium.

In the inventories that we have thus far considered, thenumber of Latin manuscripts surpassed by a fair margin thosein the Greek tongue. But there was one collection where thereverse was the case. What was later known as the Library ofSan Marco in Venice was, until the middle of the sixteenth

century, substantially the library of Cardinal Bessarion. ThisByzantine scholar, who left his fatherland in 1438, brought withhim to Rome a library of Greek manuscripts more importantfor number and content than any existing in Italy. In 1468 he

gave these books to the republic of Venice, and the inventorywhich was drawn up at that time indicates that there were 482Greek codices and 254 in Latin.36 Of those in Greek, abouttwo hundred were works of a sacred nature and the others weredivided among the conventional groups.

Another noteworthy phase in the development of theserenaissance libraries resulted from the establishment of thefirst printing press in Italy in 1465 at Subiaco. None of theinventories issued previous to that date show any indicationsthat the libraries possessed anything but hand-written books.And in the Urbino catalogue of 1481 no printed books occur.

This fact seems to bear out Vespasiano's statement that Duke34 That is, Mantua, 1417; Cosimo dei Medici's, 1418.36 That is, Pavia, 1426; Ferrara, 1436; Eugene IV's, 1443.36Published by H. Omont, "Inventaire des manuscrits grecs et latins

donn6s a Saint Marc de Venise par le Cardinal Bessarion," Revue des Biblio-

theques iv (1894), 149-179.

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Frederick refused to have his collection contaminated by the

presence of a single printed volume. The Naples catalogue ofthe same date, however, shows that the Aragon kings did notshare this aversion, for out of 206 volumes 46 are labelled

stampata. And that this enthusiasm for the new industry wasnot confined to southern Italy is clear from an examination ofthe 1495 catalogue of Ferrara, where out of 512 entries 163 areindicated as "machine-made." The Medici catalogue of thesame date, on the contrary, contains comparatively fewvolumes of this sort. The art of printing was relatively latein its development at Florence, for no press was establishedthere until 1471. Perhaps it is not strange that the city which

gave employment to so many professional scribes should havebeen slow to encourage the development of an art that would

ultimately deprive them of their livelihood. But the foot-hold gained by the printed book at the end of the fifteenth

century, however slight it was, was the first step in a battle inwhich the manuscripts were destined to play a losing part.The last to give way to the onslaught were books of a religiousnature, such as missals, breviaries, offices, which continued tobe written by hand. This same conservative tendency is to befound in the catalogues of the libraries themselves, for we stillconsult hand-written lists of the conventi soppressi collectionsin the Laurentian library, or of the Reginensis manuscripts inthe Vatican.

Beyond the limits set by the subject of this paper, there lies aseries of other documents, no less interesting in content andequally valuable for the light that they throw upon humanisticstudies. For the impetus to read and imitate classical authorscame not only from the princes and popes who formed suchimposing libraries as those which we have been considering.

Of importance also was the part played by humbler scholars,who through their own private collections of manuscriptshelped to diffuse the spirit which we have come to recognize ascharacteristic of the renaissance.

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Documents

The Catalogues of the Princely and Papal Libraries of the Italian Renaissance