The manuscript collection consists of about 3,000 volumes currently divided into three funds: manuscripts in Latin alphabet, Greek alphabet, and Oriental alphabets. The manuscripts have historically varied provenances.
The manuscripts of the convent of St. Augustine
The original core of the Angelica Library consists of manuscripts from the convent of St. Augustine, partly donated by the friars themselves and partly by Roman nobles, benefactors of the convent. Among them, the most munificent was William of Estouteville (1412-1483). Bearing his coat of arms are the 4 volumes containing the Expositiones in quattuor Evangelia of Thomas Aquinas (Ms. 371-374) and manuscripts referable to the late 11th or early 12th century of St. Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos (Mss. 1085-1087). From the point of view of the richness and variety of the materials, one of the most important collections is the one donated by the Prior General of the Order of Augustinians Egidio da Viterbo (1469-1532); his is the Hebrew language dictionary (Ms. 3), as well as the first Greek manuscripts that the convent library received.
The manuscripts of Angelo Rocca (1545-1620)
The Library’s founder, Angelo Rocca, had a sizeable collection of manuscripts including Greek and Oriental codices that was added to that of the Augustinian convent. From his library comes the splendid eleventh-century gradual-tropary (Ms. 123) penned in the Bolognese area with miniatures of the Ottonian school and adiastematic neumatic notation, and probably the famous Herbarium (Mss. 2344-2348) attributed to Gherardo Cibo, the oldest hortus siccus among those that have come down to us.
The manuscripts of Domenico Passionei (1682-1761)
A substantial collection of manuscripts comes from the library of Cardinal Domenico Passionei purchased in 1762. The collection of Greek codices preserved in Angelica derives almost all of it from the Sforziana Library purchased by the cardinal. This group of about 100 manuscripts includes such artifacts as Codex B of Herodotus’ Histories from the 10th century (Ms.gr.83) or the autograph of Demetrius Triclinius’ scoli to Euripides (Ms.gr 14). Also coming from Passionei are some of the most important manuscripts in the Latin collection: the work by Pietro da Eboli
De balneis Puteolorum et Baiarum
(Ms. 1474), the fourteenth-century Divine Comedy (Ms. 1102), the tenth-centuryEvangelistario (Ms. 1452) and probably the
Liber memorialis
from the ninth-century Remiremont Abbey (Ms. 10), the oldest manuscript of the Angelica.
The manuscripts of Santa Maria del Popolo
In 1849, following unrest resulting from the establishment of the Roman Republic, the books of the Augustinian convent of Santa Maria del Popolo were brought to the Angelica and were merged with its library holdings. Among them were the books of Nicholas bishop of Modrussa.
The manuscripts of the Massimo family
In 1884, the Angelica Library acquired 183 manuscripts from the private library of the Massimo family. Of these, about 20 surely come from the library that belonged to Cardinal Camillus II Charles Maximus (1620-1677), such as the manuscript with Images representing Mexican, Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian idols and depicting the customs of barbarian peoples (Ms. 1551) probably acquired by the cardinal during the time of his nunciature in Spain: drawn on sheets of rice paper, it constitutes a very rare testimony to the civilization and religiosity of pre-Columbian America. The other manuscripts, however, are mostly due to the collecting passion of Camillus IX Victor Maximus (1803-1873) and his son Camillus X Charles Albert (1836-1921).
Notable among the manuscripts in the Maximus Fund is the antiquarian collection with 303 sheets of drawings, mostly ancient portraits in red and black pencil and other figurative antiquities sketched in pen on the verso, and autograph commentaries by Alonso Chacon (Ms. 1564).
The acquisitions of the 19th-20th centuries.
The first lay director of the Angelica Library Ettore Novelli is credited with the purchase or gift of numerous manuscripts. These include those containing the Laudario of Jacopone da Todi (Ms. 2216 and Ms. 2306) and numerous manuscripts of Italian literature especially in the vernacular from the sale of the private library of bibliophile Giacomo Manzoni (1816-1889). Novelli is also credited with the acquisition of the library’s last Oriental codices. The most recent acquisitions consist mainly of loose documents, collections of letters and autographs from the 19th-20th centuries. These include the autographs, in Roman dialect, of Luigi Zanazzo (1860-1911).
Approximately 24,000 loose sheets make up the correspondence of Domenico Gnoli and Felice Barnabei and Arnaldo Bocelli.
Bibliography:
E. Sciarra, Brief history of the Library’s manuscript collection, in “La Bibliofilia” 111, 3, 2009, pp. 251-281.
For Manuscript Catalogs.