Itinera ad Loca Sancta. I libri di viaggio delle Biblioteche Francescane di Gerusalemme by Alessandro Tedesco (review)

St francis of assisi was born about 1182 and died on 3 october 1226. In 1210 he had already founded the order of mendicant friars now known as the Franciscan Order. In 1224 they arrived in England, but in 1217 they had already set foot in the Holy Land. Thus it is that the Franciscans have in 2017 celebrated the eighth centenary of their first establishing a church in Jerusalem. Since 2012 various members of the Catholic University of Milan, under the supervision of Professor Edoardo Barbieri, have been visiting Jerusalem at regular intervals, and Professor Barbieri has wisely arranged for several of his most promising pupils, especially Luca Rivali and Alessandro Tedesco, to begin the daunting task of sorting out and properly cataloguing the circa 200 printed books on the subject of travels to the Holy Land, not to mention the manuscripts, which still exist in the Franciscan Libraries of Jerusalem. Thus was inaugurated in 2010 a project entitled 'Books—Bridges of Peace' by the Centro di Ricerca Europeo Libro Editoria Biblioteca—CRELEB—at the Catholic University of Milan.

This is the sixth publication to have resulted from this project, the earlier volumes being as follows: (1) Libri di Terra Santa, exhibition catalogue by Alessandro Tedesco (see The Library, vii, 19 (2018), 104); (2) The Device for Reading: Books as a Technique for the Preservation of Texts in the East and West from the Middle Ages to Today. 3rd–5th November 2015, Library of the Custody of the Holy Land, St Saviour, Jerusalem. Una mostra a cura di Edoardo Barbieri; preface by Mirjam M. Foot; (3) Ars artificialiter scribendi. An Exhibition of XVth Century Books in the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. Ed. by Luca Rivali and Lorenzo Salamone. 8th–10th November 2016, Main Hall of the Custody, New Gate, Jerusalem (26 incunabula were exhibited); (4) Francesco d'Assisi tra i libri antichi della Custodia di Terra Santa. Jerusalem 2017 at the General Library of the Custody of the Holy Land; and (5) Luca Rivali, Incunaboli e cinquecentine della biblioteca generale della Custodia di Terra Santa e dello Studium Biblicum Franciscanum di Gerusalemme. Catalogo (Udine: Forum, 2016).

This impressive and detailed volume by Alessandro Tedesco describes 202 items printed between 1490 (Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam, [Speyer]: Peter Drach, 29 July 1490) and 1799 (Christian van Adrichem, Breve descripción de la ciudad de Jerusalem, Madrid: Benito Cano, 1799). These are not, however, 202 editions, for at least 54 of them are duplicates. A number of copies are not the original editions, but reproductions, which the authorities in Jerusalem have gone to considerable trouble to obtain from abroad. Whether original editions or not, Tedesco has given all possible details on their provenance and on their present condition. He must have examined every book minutely, page by page. If anything, his volume is over-burdened with footnotes (so many indeed that the average user could never digest them all), and he provides excellent indexes and working bibliography, after a lengthy introduction. This collection is in no sense a set of rare books, for its purpose was, and is, to bring together all publications concerning travel to the Holy Land.

One very rare book which has been obtained in reproduction is no. 55 in Tedesco's list: Girolamo Castiglione, Fior de Terra Sancta noviter impressa, Messina: Guilelmus Schonberger for Matthaeus Pancratius, 6 August 1499 (GW 6176, IGI 2560). Only two copies of the original are recorded, at the university libraries of Bologna and Messina. A few random examples which are of interest to the present reviewer may be mentioned. No. 26, Vincenzo Berdini, OFM, Historia dell'antica, e moderna Palestina descritta in tre parti, Venice: Giovanni Battista Surian, 1642: the author is not in the British Library, which has only two other books by this rare publisher, dated 1642 and 1645...