Księgozbiór biblioteki katedralnej w Wilnie z końca XVI w.

Abstract

The Book Collection of the Vilna Cathedral Library at the End of the Sixteenth CenturyThis article undertakes a reconstruction of the contents of the Vilna cathedral library in the light of the inventory of books from 1598. It is followed by an appendix – Index Librorum in Bibliotheca Ecclesiae Cathedralis Vilnensis – and a proposed solution to the abbreviated entries of the books comprising the library. In the course of identifying the books and authors mentioned in the 1598 inventory it proved necessary to make use of numerous printed library catalogues, incunabula and early printed books, as well as the historiography of book collections. In total, according to the 1598 inventory the cathedral library contained about 121 volumes. However, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the capitular book collection grew to at least 267 works, some of them in several volumes. The cathedral library emerges from the inventory as testimony to the humanist interests of the resident cathedral clergy. The cathedral library comprised not only liturgical books and patristic works, but also classics of literature, and works belonging to a broadly conceived humanist culture. The entirety was completed by works and authors that have not yet been identified. Private book collections are a separate research question. The inventories of deceased canons and prelates show that some of them had substantial book collections, of about 50 volumes. The lists of books compiled at the beginning of the seventeenth century, books that subsequently entered the chapter library, can show the intellectual preferences of a particular person.