The collection
The collection, which includes approximately 6,300 items and covers a chronological span from the 8th to the 20th century, has its origins in the private library of Cardinal Girolamo Casanate and has increased over the centuries thanks to the purchasing policy carried out by the Dominican prefects and directors, expert bibliophiles who have enriched the library’s heritage with the most significant texts and rarest items. The collection is in fact characterized by an extreme variety of book and documentary typologies and textual contents.
Highlights
Among the most famous examples are: the liturgical rolls Benedictional, Pontifical and Exultet in Beneventan (10th-12th century, ms. 724), the Theatrum Sanitatis (ms. 4182) from the Lombard area, the Antiphonaries made at the end of the 15th century from the library of the Dominican convent of Santo Spirito in Siena (Mss. 4505-4508, Mss. 4510-4511), the autographed musical manuscripts of Niccolò Paganini. The collection is enriched by more than 500 decorated and illuminated manuscripts which represent in their entirety almost all the Western pictorial tendencies and in part also the Eastern ones. There are also luxury codices that testify to high-ranking patronage, such as the Tacuinum Sanitatis (ms. 459) which belonged to the library of King Matthias Corvinus in Budapest and the collection of chansons composed on the occasion of the wedding of Isabella d’Este with Francesco Gonzaga, an original testimony to the instrumental practice of the Ferrarese court (Ms. 2856).
Read more:
A. Moricca Caputo, Catalogo dei manoscritti della Biblioteca Casanatense, Roma, 1949
I. Ceccopieri, Il fondo manoscritti della Biblioteca Casanatense, Roma, Palombi, 1988
V. Sanzotta, I manoscritti classici latini della Biblioteca Casanatense, Roma, Istituto poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2015
M. Panetta, I manoscritti greci del Fondo Casanatense, Firenze, 1989
I. Ceccopieri, Il fondo ‘cinese’ della biblioteca Casanatense : testi e documenti manoscritti dei sec. 17.-18., Roma, Istituto poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2022
V. De Gregorio, La Biblioteca Casanatense di Roma, Napoli, Ed. scientifiche italiane, 1993
Consult: