Late Medieval and Early Modern Libraries: Knowledge Repositories, Guardians of Tradition and Catalysts of Change

Submitted by ecn1 on Thu, 07/25/2024 - 21:25
TitleLate Medieval and Early Modern Libraries: Knowledge Repositories, Guardians of Tradition and Catalysts of Change
Publication TypeBook
Year of Publication2023
Series EditorMerisalo, Outi, Golob, Nataša, Magionami, Leonardo
Number of Pages341 pp.
PublisherBrepols
CityTurnhout, Belgium
ISBN9782503605982
Abstract

Libraries are an important factor in preserving and transmitting knowledge, thus contributing to historical continuity. The very concept of simultaneous availability of different texts transmitting possibly contradictory ideas, however, implies a great potential for engaging readers in new ways of thinking, thus promoting change. In addition to transmitting texts, historical libraries would often also be perceived as objects of material and spiritual value enhancing the prestige of their owner, e.g. contributing to the image-building of the political entities ruled by emperors, kings and princes. While the history of individual libraries of the Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have been treated in various detail, no large-scale study of the impact of Late Medieval and Early Modern libraries as knowledge repositories and guardians of tradition, on the one hand, and catalysts of change, on the other, seems to exist. This volume, which is inspired by the outcome of the final colloquium of the Lamemoli project held in Siena in March 2022, explores from the book historical point of view a series of both well-known and severely underexplored Late Medieval and Early Modern book collections in existence between c. 1250 and c. 1650, a period of intense mediatic, cultural, religious and political change in Western Europe. Covering an extensive geographical area from France and Italy to Central and Northern Europe, the collections are examined for both their material characteristics and contents, and their historical formation, in order to assess their roles in preserving and transmitting information as well as generating new ideas
Annotation

10 contributions in English, 9 in Italian and 1 in French.
Contents:
Intro -- Table of contents -- Introduction

I. Royal Libraries -- La dispersion de la Librairie de Charles V et Charles VI au xve siècle (après 1424) -- Cultural Perspectives on Printed Works in Sigismund II Augustus' Library*

II. Institutional Libraries -- Established Libraries as a Destination for Newly Published Works in a Manuscript Culture -- Medieval Authors' Perspectives -- Studio e libri nella biblioteca francescana di Santa Croce in Firenze tra XIII e XIV secolo -- Nuovi apporti documentari -- Dalla Collectio Amploniana alla Collectio Collegii Portae Caeli; Caratteri e problemi di una collezione in trasformazione -- Epulae litterarum -- The Universal Latin Library of Pope Nicholas V (r. 1447-1455) -- Bishop Sigismund of Lamberg and his Books -- Alla ricerca della biblioteca manoscritta del Collegio Romano dei Gesuiti -- Omnia ex archivis et fide dignis monumentis collecta -- Heinrich Eckstorm's Chronicon Walkenredense (1617) and the Archiving of Monastic Heritage in Brunswick-Lüneburg -- Archives against Myths -- The Hanover Historian Johann Heinrich Jung (1715-1799) and the Counts of Bentheim --

III. Private Labraries -- Biblioteche di medicina; Il caso dei traduttori dei medici greci (secoli XII-XIV) -- Retorica, ortodossia, bibliofilia -- L'influenza culturale della biblioteca pontificia nelle raccolte librarie di due ecclesiastici del Nord della Francia -- Le biblioteche fiorentine pubbliche e private da Salutati a Poliziano -- Pico's Latin Manuscripts -- Palaeographical and Codicological Observations -- Pico's Multilingual Pentateuch -- The Significance of Pope Paul II and his Library in the Dissemination of Flavio Biondo's (1392-1463) Decades -- Reconstructing Pomponio Leto's library -- A Proposal; Bartolomeo del Bene, l'Accademia degli Alterati, e il Libro dell'Anno (Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. Lat. 8857) -- La biblioteca di Marquard Gude come deposito di saperi greci e latini -- Strategie di uso e rappresentazione: l'esempio dei Geoponica -- Abbreviations of Library Names -- Index rerum -- Index nominum -- Index codicum

Region:

Library Type:

Chronological Period: