A.D. 1817
The large Canonici collection of MSS. was obtained from Venice in this year, for the sum of £5444, a purchase unprecedented in greatness in the history of the Library293. The collection was formed by Matheo Luigi Canonici, a Venetian Jesuit, who was born in 1727 and died in Sept. 1805 or 1806. Indefatigable in his passion for antiquities, he first formed a Museum of statues and of medals at Parma, but, in consequence of the Jesuits being expelled from the State, this was sold to the government. He then at Bologna set himself to collect religious objects of interest, and had succeeded to some extent, when the rector of his society observed to him that such a collection was little suitable to a poor monk, and he consequently disposed of it to a Roman prince. Finally, at Venice, he commenced the gathering of a library, in which it is said, as one evidence of its extent, there were more than four thousand Bibles written in fifty-two languages294.
The MSS. purchased by the Bodleian amount in number to about 2045. Dibdin, almost immediately upon the acquisition, noticed it thus295:—
‘They have recently acquired a very curious and valuable collection of MSS., which formerly belonged to an ex-Jesuit Abbé, who intended (had he lived to have seen the restoration of the order of the Jesuits) to have presented them to the Jesuits’ College at Venice. Neither pains nor expense were spared among his brethren, in all parts of the world, to make the collection, on that account, as perfect as possible.’
In Greek there are 128 volumes, chiefly of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a few of earlier date, including two Evangelistaria assigned by Montfaucon to the ninth century. Of Latin classical authors and Mediæval poets there are 311 volumes; some of those of the former class are of great age and value, notably a Virgil of the tenth century (No. 50). Ninety-three MSS. form the class of Latin Bibles; the finest of these are, one written in 1178 for the church of SS. Mary and Pancras in Ranshoven, and another, in five very large folio volumes, written and illuminated in France, in the years 1507-1511. Of Latin ecclesiastical writers and Fathers there are 232 volumes; and of Latin miscellanies (chiefly in medicine, philosophy and science, theology, and belles lettres, with scarcely anything of an historical character), 576 volumes. Of all these classes a catalogue was published by Mr. Coxe in 1854, forming part iii. of the new general Catalogue of MSS.
Another division consists of Liturgical books. In this class there are now 400 volumes, but about 130 of these were added from the Rawlinson collection. They consist chiefly of Horæ, Breviaries, Missals, and Psalters, with a few other service-books; most of those which belonged to Canonici being ‘secundum usum Romanum.’ No catalogue of this series has, as yet, been made.
A sixth division comprehends 300 Italian MSS. (including five in Spanish) of which a very elaborate catalogue was compiled, as a labour of love, by the Count Alessandro Mortara, during the years of his stay in Oxford296. His MS. was bought after his death from his executor the Abate Giuseppe Manuzzi, of Florence, for £201, in the year 1858; it was afterwards put to press under the care of the accomplished Italian scholar, and intimate friend of Count Mortara, Dr. H. Wellesley, the late Principal of New Inn Hall, and appeared, with an Italian preface by him giving some account of the whole collection, in one volume quarto (158 pages,) in 1864.
The last portion of the collection consists of 135 Oriental MSS., chiefly valuable Hebrew books on vellum. One of these (No. 78) is a copy of Maimonides’ Commentary on the Law, in fourteen books, which is dated 1366. Seven of the Biblical volumes are noticed in De Rossi’s Variæ Lectiones Veteris Testamenti. The few Arabic MSS. are described in Dr. Pusey’s Continuation of Nicol’s Catalogue.
A curious story of the recovery, amidst these books, of some leaves belonging to a printed vellum Bible already in the Library, will be found related under the year 1750. A few other MSS. from Canonici’s library were sold by auction, with some from Saibante’s, in London, in 1821. And many relating to Italian and Venetian history, which were at first retained by one of the heirs, passed afterwards into the hands of the Rev. Walter Sneyd, of Baginton, Warwickshire, their present possessor. A MS. volume of notices of the Canonici library, drawn up by Signor Lorenzi, of Venice, was bought by the Bodleian, in 1859, for ten guineas297.
A MS. of Suidas, of the fifteenth century, was purchased for £220 10s. Another acquisition was a French translation, made in 1417, by Laurens de Preme, of the Ethics, Politics, &c., of Aristotle298. Some specimens of the Javanese language were given by Capt. L. H. Davy.
Among printed books, the most noticeable purchase (besides the Edd. Pr. of Livy, 1469, Lactantius, 1465, &c.) was that of a vellum copy of the first edition of the Hebrew Pentateuch, printed at Bologna in 1482, for £17 10s. Some sets of controversial and political tracts, with other books, which had belonged to Thomas Brande Hollis and Dr. John Disney, were bought at the sale of the library of the latter.
Notes
293 The money was raised by loans of £2000 from the Radcliffe Trustees and £3644 from the University Bankers. They were both repaid by the year 1820.
294 De Backer’s Bibliothèque des écrivains de la comp. de Jésus; quatr. série, p. 93. 8vo. Liège, 1858.
295 Bibliogr. Decam. iii. 429.
297 The first MSS. of Dante which the Library possessed, came in the Canonici collection; they are in number fifteen. This fact is worth mentioning, on account of an extraordinary story told by Girolamo Gigli, in his Vocabolario Cateriniano, p. cciii. (a book the printing of which was commenced at Rome in 1717, but which was suppressed, by bull, before completion), that in the Bodleian Library at ‘Osfolk,’ there was a MS. of the Divina Commedia, which, from being employed in enveloping a consignment of cheese (and so imported into England by a mode of conveyance said to have been usually adopted by Florentine merchants, with a view of spreading at once a knowledge of their luxuries and their literature), had become so saturated with a caseous savour as to require the constant guardianship of two traps to protect it from the voracity of mice. Hence, according to this marvellous travellers’ story, the MS. went by the name of The Book of the Mousetrap! (See Notes and Queries, i. 154.)
298 Bodl. MS. 965.