Paul Oskar Kristeller. Latin Manuscript Books Before 1600: A List of the Printed Catalogues and Unpublished Inventories of Extant Collections. Ergänzungsband 2006 (review)

Among Paul Oskar Kristeller's many achievements in his far-reaching legacy was his Latin Manuscript Books before 1600, which he saw to its fourth revised and enlarged edition with the assistance of Dr. Sigrid Krämer. Now, fourteen years later, Krämer, with the assistance of the late Birgit Christine Arensmann, has completed a supplementary volume compiling those manuscript catalogues and unpublished manuscript inventories up to 2002. Thus the indispensable reference work that should be used by medieval and Renaissance scholars and students doing research involving manuscript sources has nearly been brought up-to-date. The book, Hilfsmittel 23 in the same Monumenta Germaniae Historica series, nicely matches Kristeller-Krämer's Hilfsmittel 13 (referred to here as LMB). The supplement follows the same format; however, there is no inclusion of Section D, "Directories and Guides to Libraries and Archives," and hence no mention of The Europa World of Learning 2008, presently in its fifty-eighth edition, or any recent edition.

Although this is a very impressive compilation, inevitably omissions of pertinent works can be found as well as a failure to correct errors or update details in LMB. In Austria still to seek are G. Kompatscher's Die Handschriften der Wiltener Stiftsbibliothek Altbestand (1995), the Oberösterreichischen Landesarchiv edited by Haus der Geschichte (1998), and C. Ziegler's Zisterzienserstift Zwettl. Katalog der Handschriften des Mittelalters, Teil IV Cod. 301-424, Scriptorium Ordinis Cisterciensium (1996/1997). The Franziskanerkloster in Schwaz has a card file of over 200 entries, not the twenty-seven cited in LMB. The manuscripts of the Stiftsbibliothek in Mondsee are now in the ÖNB in Vienna. The present name of the former Studienbibliothek in Linz is Bundesstaatliche Landesbibliothek whose manuscript inventory by K. Schiffmann lists 1,112, not 504 items. In Croatia, the Franciscan monastery on the island of Visovac (which I have visited) possesses a typed inventory of 137 manuscripts in its Rukopisi Knjižnice Franjna. For the Vodňany Museum Library in Czech Republic there is F. Bartoš's Zvlastni Otisk Českě Akademie véd Samostana a uméni 55 (1946), 5-12. In Nevers, there is Guy Thuillier's Les manuscrits et les dessins de la Bibliothèque de Nevers (1992). The Archives de la Vienne now hold the manuscripts of the Societé des Archives historiques du Poitou in Poitiers. A. Lambert's second volume of Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de la Ville Évreux (1906), 353-77, lists 129 Latin manuscripts. In Avignon, the Musée Calvet's manuscript collection, which has expanded from 3,093 to 6,402, is now in the Bibliothèque Municipale. As for Germany, the Staatliche Bibliothek in Regensburg does not have a new catalogue in progress contrary to a reference in LMB. The Stadtarchiv (not the Stadtbibliothek) in Weissenburg now holds thirty manuscripts. The contents of the Hannover-Kestner Museum are now in the Rathaus. Professor Patschowski of the University of Konstanz compiled in 1999 the Verzeichnis der Handschriften in der Bibliothek des Suso-Gymnasiums in a twenty-two page loose-leaf folder. F. Battenberg published Handschriften (Abt. C1), Repertorien des Hessischen Staatsarchiv Darmstadt 5 (1990). Manuscripts are kept in the Dombibliothek in Fritzlar, not in its Museum.

The collection of 130 manuscripts of the József Bajza Library in Gyöngyös is now found in the Országos Széchényi Könyvtar in Budapest. Among many works to appear in Italy have been Giuseppe Schirò's Le bibliotheche di Monreale (1992), listing the collections in the Biblioteca del Seminario Arcivescovile and the Biblioteca Comunale and in Messina the Catalogo del Fondo Vecchio of the Biblioteca Regionale Universitaria, formerly arranged as F. A. 1-SS503, now F. V. and F. N., each in five typed...