RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

Books, libraries and culture by the regular orders in modern Italy

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di MACERATA - SCIENZE STORICHE, DOCUMENTARIE, ARTISTICHE E DEL TERRITORIO - ()

Research Unit Leader

Rosa Marisa Borraccini

Description

The work of the research Unit of Macerata will mainly follow two guidelines. The first, concerning bibliography and the history of typography, will have the purpose to recover the “lost book”: the identification of the XV-XVI centuries printed editions credited by the inventories but not certified with any acknowledged exemplar yet (Zappella 1997). Using focused inspections and cross-checks to eliminate the risk of bibliographical “ghost” editions, the research will continue to explore the integrative potential of this source bringing actual contributes to the knowledge of the printing production of the first centuries, as the research essays have shown until now, and this is especially true for some types of books easy to use and subject to deterioration like school texts, devotional books and popular literature. The second research guideline, concerning the history of the library, will identify and define the privileged relationship that existed between the clerics and the books they possessed, as the books were often made personal and they were reclaimed with distinctive signs and explicit ownership inscriptions currently detectable on the exemplars that were handed down. (Pozzi –Pedroia 1996, Tesori di una biblioteca francescana 2000). Therefore the structure and the cultural identity of the religious orders will not only be examined on the basis of their type of bibliographical heritage, but also evaluating the rules pertaining organization and management, use and preservation of librarian collections.
The complete transcription of the first studies on the inventories of the texts belonged to the five monastic and convent congregations (Prin 2003) outlined a lucid and solid frame of their libraries that raised a new question: the dispersion of the collections and the localization of the preserved exemplars. The religious orders being studied by the Unit of Macerata are as follows:
Congregation of the Benedictines from Montevergine (VL 11313)
Congregation of the Camaldoli’s Hermits from Monte Corona (VL 11303)
Congregation of the Hermits of S. Hieronymus of the Blessed Peter from Pisa (VL 11292)
Congregation of the friars of the Saints Barnabas and Ambrose ad Nemus (VL 11294)
Order of the Marches Convent Minors (VL 11280, cc. 1-229)

The work starts from the inventories of the XVII century. After maintaining the frame of the histories of every singular Congregation along with the recurring suppressions that occurred to the Italian religious orders, the Unit will try to reconstruct the centuries-old course of these libraries and then what happened to the books. Thus, what the Unit shall do is operating a determined change of perception with respect to the prevailing systems of research: the guiding principle shall not be the chance scrutiny of the exemplars thrown in today’s library funds, generally called “suppressed convent books”, but rather the “knowledge” of the books learned on the inventories shall guide to the conscious identification of the exemplar in the current collection that acquired it for historical reasons. Once the bibliological marks mentioned before (reliure, ownership inscription) have been included in this research system – they will grant, if properly questioned, an additional information that will result decisive for the identification of books.
Following this general principles of action and in anticipation of conducting experimental researches within a short time, a preliminary work has been done in order to proceed to a guided detection of the funds of the libraries located in the Marches. The website “Le carte e la storia. Le biblioteche claustrali delle Marche di fronte all’Unità d’Italia” http://bibliotecheclaustrali.unimc.it/ answers for these things and grants the availability of registers and digitals pictures of the Central Archive documentation regarding the devolution of ecclesiastic libraries of the Marches after the Unitarian suppression of the religious corporations during the years between 1861-1895. The web pages are under being enhanced with supplementary integrative documentation preserved in the peripheral institutes (archives and libraries).
The crossing of the inventories written in the XVII century for the Inquiry of the Congregation of the Index – operations are made easier by the database RICI – and the ones that were made on the occasion of the post-Unitarian devolution has only one objective: the comparison of the different conditions of the ecclesiastic book heritage within the space of three centuries focusing on all directions taken by the streams of the dispersion in order to have the surviving exemplars identified and localized.
This is an ambitious project that must be developed through increasing stages and focused on specific research cases, most of those cases have already been identified. The unit of Macerata greatly rest upon the capable contributes of the ICCU officers, since they showed great interest for the project and accepted to start a collaboration, and on the advantages brought about by those partners who proved to be fundamental in the past for the improvement and the development of the research.