Bibliographia Kristelleriana: A Bibliography of the Publications of Paul Oskar Kristeller 1929-1999 (review)

At a time when curricula vitae are often inflated, it is a pleasure to have in hand a bibliography giving entrance into a truly great scholar, and which is an accurate record of his accomplishments. A bibliography like this one does more for us than simply list publications. In that regard the editor quotes Kristeller himself: "A bibliography considered in itself is a rather modest instrument for historical research, but the information gathered in it is a reflection, for all its mechanical quality, of a . . . spiritual reality, and it often allows us to discover and understand such a reality" (xix, my translation).

Paul Oskar Kristeller published his first work in 1929, his thesis on the soul in the ethics of Plotinus. Even as recently as 1996, Georges Leroux in the Cambridge Companion to Plotinus called it a "brilliant study," done by a young man in his early twenties. As we know well, Kristeller continued to publish on philosophy, Renaissance Humanism, and other topics until his death seventy years later. His labors were not finished even then. The writings of "one of the great historical scholars of modern times," as John Monfasani calls him in the preface, continued to be published even after Kristeller's death in 1999 and are listed in Gilbhard's bibliography. Kristeller's writings, including translations of them into a number of languages, total 739, with quality equal to or surpassing the quantity.

This bibliography, which incorporates, amplifies, and brings earlier bibliographies up to the present, is a model of its kind. The entries cross-reference previous editions and translations of every publication. They include Kristeller's book reviews, in which he sometimes made clear to the reader points that were implicit in the works under review but that had in an explicit way escaped the authors themselves. The reviews reflected Kristeller's learning and insight, but, just as important, they reflected the kindness and sensitivity with which he treated even those with whom he disagreed. The bibliography rightly does not include reviews of Kristeller's own publications because, as Gilbhard says, "considering their enormous quantity, it would have been almost impossible to produce a list with any claim to comprehensiveness" (xx).

John Monfasani's preface is an updated version of an obituary he wrote that appeared shortly after Kristeller's death. It is a crisp and informative account of Kristeller's life and accomplishments. I know of no better place than in it to look for a quick overview of a brilliant career that was forged in the tragic furnace of the Holocaust and continued in a lifelong exile in an adopted country. In two appendices Gilbhard presents, first, the seven Festschriften published in Kristeller's honor and provides the table of contents for each. In the second he presents Laudationes selectae, tributes to Kristeller published during his life, beginning in 1970, and reaching a climax after his death. I count forty-two of them, and they of course are only "select" encomia.

In what Gilbhard appropriately calls his Iter Kristellerianum, he has given us a reference tool that in itself is a tribute to a great man. When after Saint Augustine's death Possidius tried to make a catalogue of his writings, he said he thought they were so many that nobody could ever read them all. The same could be said of Kristeller. I think we can also apply to POK, as he was affectionately known, what Possidius went on to say about Augustine: "Yet I think that those who gained most from him were those who had been able actually to see and hear him and, most of all, those who had some contact with the quality of his life among us."