In the context of my course on the “History of Humanism” at the KU Leuven, I packed my philological bags and left my desk to explore the Hendrik Conscience Library. My main goal was to look for manuscripts and old books in order to provide my students with a tangible experience in addition to their bookish knowledge on the subject. The didactic purpose was, however, also a pretext to explore largely uncharted territory. Contrary to other prestigious Belgian libraries, namely the KBR (Royal Library of Belgium) and the Ghent University library, the Hendrik Conscience Library does not display coherent collections on Italian humanism. Specific items have reached the Hendrik Conscience Library special collections following different routes, which are not always easy to trace. Mostly they are the result of private donations across the centuries, mirroring the eclectic interests of their previous owners.
Spread across the meanders of a collection of more than 40.000 pretiosa, books on Italian Quattrocento are nothing less than needles in a haystack. The giant magnet that is metadata comes in handy only to a certain extent. For now, no specific metadata has been added to this research-field, so one must resort to empirical stratagems. Fortunately I was not navigating in this mare magnum alone: while I was at the steering wheel, the compass was in the very competent hands of curator Steven Van Impe. Together we were able to retrieve about 150 titles: a rough list of books which I then narrowed down to a selection of twenty items that can take us on a journey through the history of Italian humanism.
This journey starts with the scholastic books which, albeit reluctantly, continued to be transcribed, studied and even printed throughout the Renaissance. This is the case with the manuscripts containing the commentary on the Bible by the franciscan theologian Nicholas of Lyra, and the Compendiumtheologiae veritatis by Albertus Magnus: antiquated but still essential texts in a humanistic library, since they still appear in the famous “ideal library” of Tommaso Parentucelli. Other books reflect the modern tendencies of humanistic scholarship, which was first of all driven by the philological commitment toward the classics. From the Venetian publishing house of Simone Bevilacqua comes the edition of Lucan’s Pharsalia, with the double-commentary by Ognibene da Lonigo and Sulpicio da Veroli (1498), as well as the commented edition of Apuleius’ Asinus aureus by Filippo Beroaldo (1501), which was very influential in shaping the Renaissance neo-platonic iconography of Amor and Psyche. From Rome and the press of the German printer Eucharius Silber comes Pomponius Laetus’ edition of the letters of Pliny the Younger, which inspired, together with the letters of Seneca and Cicero, the humanistic reform of epistolography. From Italy also comes a fifteenth-century manuscript copy transmitting the Roma triumphans by Biondo Flavio, which is considered the forerunner of the modern encyclopedic tradition on Roman antiquities.
But the most interesting items held by the Hendrik Conscience Library hail, once again, from Venice. The first one is a copy of Lorenzo Valla’s translation of Herodotus’ Historiae, printed in the officina of Gregorio and Giovanni De Gregori: the marvelous printed frontispiece, exclusive to this specific edition, is further embellished by handmade decorations, which make this exemplar truly unique. The second pair of items are two exquisite editionsin octavo of Lucan and the Latin elegiacs from the printing house of the most revolutionary printer of the Renaissance: Aldo Manuzio. In the prefatory epistle to Marin Sanudo, which precedes Catullus’ poems, the inventor of italics and pocket-editions invites his distinguished friend to take a break from daily business by enjoying the lines of the poet from Sirmio. The Hendrik Conscience Library allow all of us to be Marin Sanudo for one day: is such an invitation not attractive?
Fabio Della Schiava
KU Leuven
Fabio.dellaschiava@kuleuven.be