Italian Religious Orders and their Books at the End of the Sixteenth Century

Giovanna Granata

Primo

2024-01-01

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Abstract

The paper focuses on the cultural models of Italian religious libraries at the end of the 16th century. One of the most interesting sources for the study of such libraries is the corpus of codices Vaticani Latini 11266-11326 in the Vatican Library. These codices contain the result of the investigation carried out by the Congregation of the Index into the books held by regular Orders in Italy in the wake of the Clementine Index librorum prohibitorum published in 1596 and the subsequent censorship campaign. Italian convents and monasteries were required to make a list of all the books – not just those prohibited – held in their libraries. The picture that emerges from this census is impressive. It involves 33 regular Orders and about 2200 settlements. Moreover, for each convent or monastery, common libraries are described as well as books in use by the single friars and monks, for a total of about 9500 lists. Vatican inventories are now transcribed and indexed in the online database “Le biblioteche degli ordini regolari italiani alla fine del XVI secolo” (rici.vatlib.it) under the supervision of the RICI group (Research on the Inquiry of the Congregation of the Index). The extensive information of the RICI database allows noticing some peculiar features. Measuring the number of copies of each edition, it is possible to have invaluable information on the circulation of religious literature in the extensive network of libraries belonging to regular Orders in Italy. This kind of quantitative analysis is performed focusing on the occurrences of authors and works. It is possible to observe a widespread compliance with the Clementine Index and a strong diffusion of post-Tridentine books; at the same time, some traditional presences reflect the history of religious communities over earlier periods and the persistence of some cultural trends. In the paper some cases are discussed, basing on a list of authors with a large number of occurrences and some methodological remarks are proposed.