The Great Libraries: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (3000 b.c. to 1600 a.d.) (review)

The Great Libraries: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (3000 b.c. to 1600 a.d.). By Konstantinos Sp. Staikos, preface by Hélène Ahrweiler. Translated by Timothy Cullen from the Greek ed. of 1996. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press and London: British Library, 2000. xvi, 563 pp. $125.00. ISBN 1-58456-018-5 (U.S.); 0-7123-0661-7 (U.K.)

This is a much-publicized, long-awaited book--a self-acclaimed "monumental work"--that passionately extols the cultural benefits and visual splendor of earlier libraries. The book stands consciously as an icon, exhibiting for all to see the glorious heritage of libraries in the spirit of Goethe's words, "Libraries are the memory of mankind." "To read this book and savor its illustrations," the publisher avers, "is to know a labor of love from an important and serious scholar. In this singular endeavor the author shares with us his passion for the subject. This treasure belongs on the shelf of every true bibliophile. Mr. Staikos has created a masterpiece that celebrates one of humanity's greatest achievements, the library" (i).

The author is an interior design architect who, in his professional capacity, was commissioned to redesign and reorganize two historic libraries of the Christian world: the Monastery of St. John on Patmos and the library of the Oecumenical Patriarchate in the Phanar, Constantinople. In the process, he became interested in library history and spent the better part of a decade studying the history of "libraries in the countries of the Mediterranean basin and the Near East from earliest antiquity to the Renaissance" (dustjacket). The result of his study is a ponderous work--nearly six hundred pages (heavily coated paper, 13 inches high and over 9 inches wide), including more than four hundred illustrations, half of which are in full color.

The five hundred pages of text that precede the end matter divide into two very different segments. Book One (chapters 1-11), about 240 pages long, is subtitled "From Antiquity to the Renaissance." It deals with library history from 3,000 b.c. to about a.d. 1600. Book Two, "Selected Monastic and Humanistic Libraries" (chapters 12-25), comprises about 260 pages of discussion and photographs on fourteen libraries that had their beginning prior to the Renaissance and continue to exist in our day. The end matter of about sixty pages consists of a list of abbreviations, a bibliography of nearly one thousand books, reports, and journal articles, and a twenty-page index.

Because of its lavish format and ponderous weight, one could easily gain the impression that this is the ultimate coffee-table book for premodern libraries. Perhaps it is not disingenuous to say that one would be both right and wrong in this estimate. In one sense it is a coffee-table book. In fact, this is the common comment of some colleagues that have seen us carrying this work outside of our offices. But in another sense, it is so much more.

The glorious coffee-table-like photographs are especially evident in the second half of the book. Here, Staikos says that his intention is "that the chronicle of each library should illuminate the personality of its founder and his particular interests in the world of books, on the basis of the relevant literature both old and new" (xii). The fourteen libraries highlighted in this second section include the following (along with the chronological period discussed in the accompanying text for each library): the Library of the Oecumenical Patriarchate (fourth through twentieth centuries), the Library of the Monastery of St. John on Patmos (eleventh through twentieth centuries), the Vatican Library (fifteenth through sixteenth centuries), the Cesena Library (fifteenth century), the Biblioteca Marciana (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), the Biblioteca Laurenziana (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), the St. Gall Library (eighth through twentieth centuries), the Library of Beatus...