Manuscript Writings on Politics and Current Affairs in the Collection of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601)

Abstract

This article analyses a section of the private library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, one of the largest European book collections of the late Cinquecento, housed in Padua. As well as containing between 9000 and 10,000 printed books and several hundred manuscripts, the library was rich in information on politics and current affairs. The collection of newsletters (avvisi) is systematic both in the quantity of material and in its careful bibliographic ordering. Pinelli also had an archive of political writings that is larger and better organized than equivalent collections owned by Venetian patricians. For this material, too, Pinelli created a complex and highly efficient bibliographic structure that was to make it particularly easy, after his death, for the Venetian government to seize those political writings considered to be of state interest.