Dominican origin and management
The Biblioteca Casanatense was established at the behest of Cardinal Girolamo Casanate (Naples 1620 – Rome 1700), who in 1698 donated the largest part of his estate to the Dominican fathers of the Convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva for the opening of a public library and a centre for the propagation of Thomist doctrine.
On 3 November 1701, a year after the cardinal’s death, the ‘vase’, designed by architect Antonio Maria Borioni, was inaugurated, thanks also to the contribution of 12,000 scudi by the cardinal’s friend, the archiatrician Giovanni Maria Castellani. The Hall also housed the cardinal’s private ‘library’ (a collection of over 25,000 volumes, including manuscripts, incunabula and rare editions from the 16th and 17th centuries), donated to the Dominicans on the condition that its public use was guaranteed.
The cardinal’s rich bibliographic collection was already known in the second half of the 17th century, arousing the admiration of contemporary scholars, such as Giovan Pietro Bellori (1613-1696) and Carlo Bartolomeo Piazza (1632-1713), who described it as ‘a compendium of all sciences’ as it ‘undoubtedly reflected the content and concept of universality proper to the Baroque library’.
As early as 1717, the curators realised that the Salon could no longer contain the substantial bibliographic holdings, which had been increased through a wise policy of acquisitions, conducted nationally and in Europe; they therefore called upon the architect Borioni once again, who presented a plan for an extension.
Bozzetto preparatorio per la volta del Salone Monumentale
The books, ordered by subject (27 classes), reflect the variety and plurality of interests of the time: thirteen classes are dedicated to religious disciplines: sacred scripture, patristics, history of councils and synods, provincial chapters of religious orders, ecclesiastical history, sacred history, hagiography, rhetoric, treatises on preaching, biblical exegesis, theology, religious and liturgical literature in languages other than Western, such as Hebrew, Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese. Alongside the theological sciences, there is also a section devoted to canon and civil law, followed by literature, history, philosophy, medicine, mathematics and the natural sciences.
Work, which was interrupted several times due to litigation by the Jesuits of the Roman College over the size of the building, was only completed in 1725.
The realisation of the project, which can be said to have been completed with the visit of Pope Benedict XIII in 1729, brought the Salon to its current dimensions of 60.30 m in length and 15.60 m in width. With its 60,000 volumes arranged on a double row of wooden shelving, surmounted by cartouches – interrupted by a gallery to facilitate the taking of books – it not only stands as an interesting example of a modern library, but also represents in synthesis four centuries of European printing history.
The Contested Library
Following the law on the suppression of the religious corporations in Rome, issued on 19 June 1873, the Casanatense passed to the Italian State. On 5 November of the same year the notary Bobbio, on behalf of the Giunta liquidatrice dell’asse ecclesiastico established for the occasion, took possession of the library, the supervision of which was entrusted to a government director. Thus began a joint administrative management with the adjoining Vittorio Emanuele II National Library, inaugurated in 1876 and then housed in the Jesuit building at the Collegio Romano: the aim was to transform the Casanatense into the theological section of the Nazionale. This situation lasted until 1884 when the Dominicans lost the lawsuit they had brought against the Italian State to regain possession of the Casanatense and abandoned the library, which was then declared an “autonomous body” and began to have its own management and staff.
The new library
Over the course of the next fifty years, directors such as Edoardo Alvisi, Ignazio Giorgi and Luigi De Gregori followed one after the other, with the aim of modernising the institute. The changes mainly concern the study and research area of the institute. The modern library is designed according to the new architectural criteria, which provide for a clear separation of space between the areas designated for the protected storage of material (the repositories) and the reading rooms open to the public. The new organisation of space allows optimal use of natural light because the walls of the reading rooms, no longer covered by books, open outwards with large Art Nouveau windows.
The very entrance to the Library, originally located inside the Convent of the Minerva, was the subject of a project, dated 8 June 1891, which provided for the construction of a staircase, in order to free the Library definitively from the servitude of the Dominican access. This staircase was built in the last years of the 19th century at number 52 Via di S. Ignazio, and is still the entrance to the Library today.
Currently, the Casanatense is one of the state public libraries of the Ministry of Culture.
Read more:
T. Masetti, the Library Casanatense, edited by A. Zucchi, in Memorie Domenicane, 48 (1931), p. 280-289; 50 (1933), p. 347-362; 51 (1934), p. 235-250
A. Guglielmotti, Catalogo dei bibliotecari, cattedratici e teologi del Collegio Casanatense nel Convento della Minerva dell’Ordine dei Predicatori …, Rome, 1860
I. Giorgi, Notizie storiche, bibliografiche e statistiche sulla Biblioteca Casanatense di Roma nel 1898, Rome, Publishing company Dante Alighieri, 1900
L. De Gregori, The Library Casanatense, in Academies and Libraries of Italy, II, 6 (1929), p. 58-72
R. Panetta, The Library Casanatense, Rome, 1972
V. De Gregorio, The Library Casanatense of Rome, Naples, Italian scientific editions, 1993
The Llibrary Casanatense, Florence, Nardini, 1993
A. A. Cavarra, Casanatense Chronicle: one hundred and fifty years of lay management, Rome, Il Sextante, 2023
