Inside the monks’ cells: Bagnacavallo’s Camaldolese monastery of St. John the Baptist and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by Pope Clement VIII. The lists of the books owned by the monastery in the Codex Vaticanus Latinus 11287

Abstract

The paper aims to study the books owned by the Camaldolese monastery of St. John the Baptist in Bagnacavallo, according to the inventories gathered in the Codex Vaticanus Latinus 11287, which were drawn up by monks, who were requested from the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books after the publication of the Index librorum prohibitorum by Pope Clement VIII (1596), in order to check on the presence of prohibited, suspicious or «expurgandi» books held in any way by convents or personally by clerics, belonging to male regular orders. Where it could be possible to identify the edition, it was looked for the single book mentioned in the inventory in the rare book collections held today by the Public Library in Bagnacavallo, where the books of the Camaldulese monastery flew after the abolition in 1797.