The Library by Stuart Kells

Author:Stuart Kells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2017-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

The library was situated on the first floor of the Minorites’ monastery, a location that was inherently unsuitable. No air could circulate—because three of the four external walls lacked windows. The building sat directly above the monastery’s well; damp seeped implacably into the floors and walls. The internal layout, too, was awful. Visitors had to pass through a corn store and the monks’ dormitory to reach the library. When intrepid visitors finally reached their destination, there was no space available for them to consult the books.

Even requesting books to view was well-nigh impossible. The collection ‘had become so disorganised that the existing index was useless’. Blotz had to do something. He pressganged whomever he could into the task of restoring order. Helped intermittently by his friends Guett, Pudler and Tanner, and by Pudler’s son and Tanner’s sons’ tutor, he set about arranging the 7379 volumes and preparing a catalogue. By April 1576, a summary was ready. Blotz kept one copy and sent the other to Emperor Maximilian II in Prague. With the emperor’s blessing, Blotz changed the library’s policies and configuration. He began lending books, and he increased the collection by negotiating purchases and bequests. ‘From these uncertain beginnings the library progressed, gathering rarities and reputation.’ Blotz left behind several invaluable legacies. One of these was his influence on the planning of a new library building to replace the rabbit warren he inherited. Another was his influence on a French librarian.

In the seventeenth century Gabriel Naudé was the beau ideal of library directors. For Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister to the King of France, Naudé assembled a library that he himself called the eighth wonder of the world. Naudé thought the essence of library formation was to collect ‘all the chief and principal Authors, as well ancient as modern’. And then to classify and catalogue them: an unclassified collection deserved the name ‘library’ as little as a crowd of men deserved to be called an army. Thorough in his acquisitions, he once bought for Cardinal Mazarin the entire stock of a bookseller. On another buying trip, he passed through a town and left it ‘as bare of printed paper as if a tornado had passed, and blown the leaves away’. Naudé also recommended sending rich merchants to scour foreign bookshops for treasures and novelties.

As a result of Naudé’s work between 1642 and 1651, the Mazarin Library was a wondrous achievement: 40,000 meritorious volumes, beautifully bound in goatskin decorated in gilt with the Mazarin arms. Books old and new, rare and common, orthodox and heretical. In early 1652, however, tragedy struck. During a civil war, thousands of the books were stolen and burned. The librarian cried in anguish, ‘for he loved his handiwork as a father loves his only child’. After recovering many of the lost books, Naudé died in 1653.

Naudé’s influence as a bibliographical thinker was enormous. Samuel Pepys’s immaculate collection of books included a dedication copy of John Evelyn’s 1665 translation of Naudé’s 1627 treatise, Avis pour dresser une bibliothèque,

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