Luana Giurgevich Henrique de Sousa LeitãoClavis Bibliothecarum: catálogos e inventários de livrarias de instituições religiosas em Portugal até 1834

Abstract

Portuguese Studies vol. 35 no. 1 (2019), 105–18© Modern Humanities Research Association 2019 Reviews Luana Giurgevich and Henrique de Sousa Leitão, Clavis Bibliothecarum: catálogos e inventários de livrarias de instituições religiosas em Portugal até 1834, Fontes para o Estudo dos Bens Culturais da Igreja, 1 (Moscavide: Secretariado Nacional para os Bens Culturais da Igreja, 2016). 944 pages. Print. Reviewed by Jeremy Roe (Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas — Universidade Nova de Lisboa — Centro de Humanidades) Elaborating on the title of this work, the authors declare it to be ‘uma chave para entrar no mundo imenso das antigas bibliotecas de mosteiros, conventos e instituções religiosas de Portugal’ [a key to enter the vast world of the former libraries of Portuguese monasteries, convents and religious institutions]. It might be still better referred to as an immense bunch of keys to Portugal’s diverse ecclesiastical libraries prior to the suppression of their respective religious institutions in 1834. The bulk of this book is a detailed catalogue of two corpora of archival documents relating to some 400 religious institutions. The first concerns 901 library catalogues and book inventories; the second 348 documents relating to these libraries. All these documents are methodically catalogued according to the diverse religious and military orders, as well as other devotional entities, to which they belonged, and their geographical locations. The meticulous structure of the book as a whole, as well the clarity of the individual entries, ensures its potential to fulfil the authors’ aim to provide ‘um instrumento’ [an instrument] to develop ‘a pesquisa a novas áreas e a horizontes explorados’ [research in new areas and already explored horizons]. As might be expected, the majority of the documents from the first corpus of documents date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and above all circa 1834. Nonetheless, there are earlier documents to be traced. The lack of a chronological index of the documents catalogued in this book is felt at times, although the uncertain date of a number of the documents might have limited its value. The second corpus of documents contains a higher number of preeighteenth -century documents, such as Frei António de Araújo’s catalogue of the library of the Mosteiro de Alcobaça, which also included a description of its decoration. This was later partially recorded in a drawing included in the 1701 manuscript catalogue Aurea Clavis..., illustrated in this book. A valuable collection of documents is listed for this royal library and illuminates its development and use. However, setting aside my own interests in Baroque cultural history, it must be underscored that this book provides a tool for a range of approaches to the history of libraries and books across the early modern and modern periods, as well as other related facets of ecclesiastical, cultural and Reviews 106 intellectual history. Besides the catalogues of major libraries, such as the Alcobaça collection or Lisbon’s Convent of Nossa Senhora de Jesus, which is today conserved in the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, this book documents inventories of many more modest libraries, as well as individuals’ personal collections in conjunction with diverse legal documents and correspondence that offer valuable perspectives on the histories of book collecting and reading in ecclesiastical libraries. Toorientatethereader’sexplorationofthismonumentalcatalogueGiurgevich and Leitão provide a succinct introduction, which addresses the range and dimensions of ecclesiastical libraries over the course of their history up until 1834. They then focus on key facets of these libraries elucidated by the documents they catalogue, such as the control exerted over reading and the circulation of books. In addition to this a digital dimension to this book should also be highlighted. The book reviewed here is an independent and valuable resource in its own right, but the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal also hosts a complementary website that provides access to digital editions of some of the documents catalogued: http://clavisbibliothecarum.bn.pt/index.php. While this site is still a work in progress, it provides readers with a valuable opportunity to begin exploring some of the many libraries to which Clavis Bibliothecarum offers a key. Graciliano Ramos and the Making of Modern Brazil: Memories, Politics and Identities, ed...