Catalogo degli incunaboli della Biblioteca Teresiana di Mantova by Pasquale Di Viesti (review)

In 1937 Cesare Ferrarini (1878–1951), Director of the Biblioteca Comunale di Mantova from 1926 to 1947, published his Incunabulorum quae in civica Bibliotheca Mantuana adservantur catalogus. (Tiresomely, the whole of his book is written in Latin.) In it he listed 1208 editions. He could only quote as references Hain-Copinger-Reichling and the first six volumes of the Gesamtkatalog. But as all volumes of BMC covering Germany and Italy (i.e. vols I–VII) had been published before 1937, it is not clear why he has no mention of them. Exactly eighty years later, the time has come for the authorities of Mantua to bring out a thoroughly new, revised, and much enlarged catalogue of the collection, which now numbers 1089 editions. At first sight it would appear that the library of Mantua had lost, or had had stolen, 119 incunabula between 1937 and 2017. This is not so. Ferrarini had the frequent and maddening habit of splitting up into two or three, even six, parts, certain GW numbers, and later certain Hain-Copinger numbers, according to the various parts of their texts, and calling each of these a separate incunable edition. He also from time to time included an edition which he knew the GW to have banished to the sixteenth century, but he still included it as an ‘incunable’. All this outrageous behaviour has been found out and disposed of by the new book under review.

There is a preface to the catalogue, presumably by the compiler (pp. xxiii–xlvii), then an explanation of the rules of cataloguing (pp. xlix–liii), followed by what is described as a ‘breve excursus’ on provenance and the criteria of attribution (pp. lv– lxxiii). Not so brief, this gives in detail an account of the main sources of provenance: as is only to be expected in Italy, the vast majority of incunabula now in public libraries came from the monastic libraries after the Napoleonic suppressions of 1797 and 1805. About a quarter of the whole, i.e. some 250 editions, came from the monastery of S. Benedetto in Polirone. Many more came from at least six other conventual libraries nearby; at least 110, for example, from the Convent of S. Domenico, and 113 from S. Francesco. As for private donors, the Mantuan scholar Count Carlo D’Arco (1799–1872), author of many books on his native city, left 46 incunabula which were absorbed into the municipal collections in 1886.

The result is that most of the incunabula now in Mantua are well enough known editions in theology, philosophy, law, and letters. The preface, however (p. xlii) claims that twenty-five editions are the only copy recorded in Italy, while five are possibly unique in the world. These five are:

1. 1. Confessionale. [Bologna: Ugo Rugerius, c. 1474–76.] 4°.

   ISTC ic00824500. GW 0736510N. IGI vi 3122-A.

   Cat. no. 395.

2. 2. Confessionale. [Venezia: Jacobus Pentius, de Leuco, c. 1495.] 8°.

   ISTC ic00804500. GW 0207910N. IGI 3121.

   Cat. no. 393.

3. 3. Alexander de Villa Dei, Doctrinale. (I–IV.) Mantova: [Johann Schall], 1475. 4°.

   ISTC ia00420800. GW 948. IGI 306.

   Cat. no. 34.

4. 4. Alexander de Villa Dei, Doctrinale. (I–IV.) [Vicenza: Hermann Liechtenstein, c. 1477.] 2°.

   ISTC ia00421200. GW 0094005N. IGI 309.

   Cat. no. 36. N.B. The catalogue entry gives Vicenza as the place of printing, whereas the preface (p. xlii) gives Venice. There is always confusion over this point, since the printing career of Hermann Liechtenstein overlapped in these very years: BMC has 1475–80 for Vicenza, 1479–1494 for Venice.

5. 5. Horae ad usum Romanum. Paris: Philippe Pigouchet for Simon Vostre, 4 Dec. 1493. 8°.

   ISTC ih00375300. GW 13140. IGI 4834.

   Cat. no. 546.

As was to be expected, the collection contains no incunable printed in England, Spain, or...