CHAPTER IV.
LIBRARIES AND THE BOOK TRADE. VESPASIANO DA BISTICCI.
While such a busy life was developed under the influence and continual encouragement of Cosimo de’ Medici, the two great collections had originated through him which at that time supplied a centre for literary work, and now have combined their most important contents in the same locality and form the most considerable part of the celebrated library to which (as to a sanctuary of the literature of antiquity and the Renaissance) learned men of all countries continually direct their steps. In the days of his exile, Cosimo, in conjunction with his brother, by the erection of the library-hall of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice,[382] had bequeathed to a foreign city where he found eager fellow-labourers—especially one, Francesco Barbaro—a monument of his gratitude and munificence. Should he not do the same, and even more, for his native city? In San Marco he would not only found a monument of his piety but of his love of knowledge. In the third dormitory of the convent we see two cells which, according to tradition, Cosimo retained for his own use when he resided here in pious intercourse with St. Antoninus and his holy companions, and where, as the inscription says, Pope Eugenius IV. spent the night after having been present at the consecration of the church on the day of Epiphany, 1442. Fra Angelico painted the Epiphany here, and later the cell was adorned with an excellent portrait of Cosimo by the hand of Jacopo da Pontormo. The library-hall makes the greatest impression. It is more than fifty yards long by ten yards broad, and has along its whole length a double row of eleven slender columns supporting the roof, and at the end a square space shut off by transverse walls, from the large windows of which the inmates formerly looked over broad quiet gardens, now turned into streets.[383] On the narrow outer side of this hall we see the Medicean arms with the balls as they were before the alterations made by King Louis XI. On the book-shelves, now set up along the rows of columns, lie more than eighty choir-books—partly belonging to the convent of San Marco, partly to other convents and churches—with miniatures from the hands of celebrated artists of the fifteenth century.
While the building was in progress Niccolò Niccoli died in 1437. The wish he had always cherished of seeing his valuable collection of books useful to the community, as he had always placed them at the disposal of his friends, was fulfilled. In his will he directed that a commission of sixteen members should dispose of his literary property so that it might best serve the community. Ambrogio Traversari, Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Carlo Marsuppini, Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Giannozzo Manetti, and Francesco Sacchetti, were among these sixteen.[384] As Cosimo de’ Medici, who had long supported Niccoli, undertook to satisfy his creditors, the disposal of the property was referred to him. The entire value of the manuscripts, about 800 in number, was estimated at 6,000 gold florins, a considerable sum which yet hardly corresponded with their real value at that time. When in 1441 the hall was finished, 400 manuscripts were laid out on sixty-four long reading-desks such as we still see in the Laurentian library, all inscribed with Niccoli’s name.[385] At Cosimo’s request Tommaso of Sarzana made regulations for the arrangement of the books,—rules which then served for the Fiesolan library, for that at Urbino, and that of the Sforzas of Pesaro.[386] ‘Whoever has to arrange a library,’ remarks Vespasiano in Pope Nicolas V.’s life, ‘cannot dispense with that inventory written by Tommaso’s own hand.’
Of the remains of Niccoli’s manuscripts Cosimo retained a part to increase the literary treasures of his house, which, enlarged by his sons and grandsons, formed the nucleus of the subsequent Medicean-Laurentian library. He divided others among his friends. But he continually thought of filling up the vacancies in the collection of San Marco, for which he made purchases and copies. A part of Coluccio Salutati’s books had gone thither with Niccoli’s library; Cosimo bought and presented it with another part,[387] as well as manuscripts of Filippo di Ser Ugolini, one of the cleverest and best-informed men in the public service of the State.[388] Vespasiano and the Dominican Fra Giuliano Lapaccini were especially occupied in Lucca and Siena with purchasing and copying. Cosimo, so variously occupied, had ordered that one of the monks of San Marco should send in the receipt to his bank in order to receive the necessary sums. Death alone prevented him from making this library complete according to the requirements of the times; Biondio Flavio, the Roman annalist and antiquary, declared that, as it was, it was the finest of the age. In 1453 the hall and a part of the books were seriously damaged by an earthquake, but were restored by Cosimo and his son Piero.
This one collection, however, was not sufficient for the active and liberal man. When he rebuilt the abbey of Fiesole, he determined to furnish this also with literary treasures. Vespasiano, whom he employed in this, describes how it was done.[389] ‘When I was in his chamber one morning, he asked what means I could suggest for forming this library? I answered that it was impossible to procure it by purchase, as the requisite books could not be collected. He answered, And how are they otherwise to be obtained? On my answering that new copies must be made, he asked further if I would undertake such copies? I declared myself ready to do so. Thereupon he empowered me to begin the work, the execution of which he left to me. The payments would be made by his bank on presentation of the receipts by the prior of the abbey. So I went to work; and as he wished it to be done as speedily as possible, and there was no want of money, I engaged in a short time 45 copyists, and furnished 200 volumes in 22 months. The arrangement was the excellent one suggested by Pope Nicolas, which was used in his own library. As all the works were not to be found at Florence, we sent to Milan, Bologna, and other places. Thus Cosimo saw this collection and an inventory of it finished, and had great pleasure in it, while he rejoiced at the speed with which it had been completed.’ The present Medicean-Laurentian library preserves, beside the literary treasures of the Medici house, the principal part of the collections made by Cosimo. In 1783 the manuscripts from the dissolved abbey of Fiesole, 223 in number, were added to the Laurentiana, and in 1808 those of San Marco. The latter, at the time of the abolition of clerical orders by the Napoleonic government, amounted to about a thousand, many of which have, however, been lost, and others returned to their former place at the restoration of 1814.[390] As with the collection of the Dominican convent, Cosimo and his sons and grandsons continued to increase that of Fiesole by new acquisitions and presents. The magniloquence of the inscriptions of many of the volumes, in which the regular clergy of the abbey praise the liberality of their patrons, may be carried too far. Nevertheless it is pleasing to meet with these proofs of the affectionate interest taken by the men in whose hands the guidance of the State lay in the institutions connected with ecclesiastical foundations, and through them profitable to the whole community. They are proofs, too, of an intimate intercourse between the clergy and laity which was advantageous to both.[391]
When Federigo of Montefeltro founded the celebrated library of Urbino, for which from thirty to forty copyists were fully employed in different towns, so that the copies alone are said to have cost nearly thirty thousand gold florins; a library, the beautiful hall of which, in the noble ducal palace, is described to us by Bernardo Baldi[392] and its wealth by Vespasiano[393]—the library of San Marco was of great use to him. ‘Illustrious lord and brother,’ he wrote on January 23, 1473, to Cosimo’s grandson,[394] ‘I have already requested your Magnificence to charge the brethren of San Marco to deliver to Vespasiano any of their books which he may require for the use of the copyists employed for me in your city. I now repeat the request that it may please you to give these orders, that for my sake they may be obliging to Vespasiano, whereby your Magnificence would do me a great favour.’ From this letter, and that addressed to Lorenzo by the brethren of the convent, in which they sign themselves as ‘Custos librorum bibliothecæ vestræ in Sto. Marco,’[395] we see that the family reserved a certain right of possession for themselves.
Vespasiano da Bisticci, to whom we owe so many valuable data for the history of his times, is the worthiest representative of the book trade, as it was developed about the middle of the fifteenth century in consequence of the great discoveries then made and increased literary activity. His intimate intercourse with popes, princes, prelates, and great lords, and the numerous and important commissions entrusted to him, prove his excellence and the high respect he enjoyed. The contents and tone of his biographies and character sketches, exceeding a hundred in number, are most valuable for a knowledge of the literary as well as the moral and general culture of the times. He displays a warm heart and excellent feeling, nor is his correct judgment weakened by his benevolence. People of high position were in intimate correspondence with him; Giannozzo Manetti, Donato Acciaiuoli, Niccolò Perotti, &c., for whom he purchased books, while, beside the Medici and the Duke of Urbino, Pope Nicolas V. employed him in the foundation of the Vatican. ‘I accept,’ thus Manetti[396] writes to him on one occasion, ‘your offer respecting the books you heard of—the Bible, and “Lives of the Fathers.” Send them me, I beg, and it will give me much pleasure. But that you do not mention the “Avicenna” seems a bad sign for medicine. Try to procure it for me, for I need it. In case you succeed in finding a “Paulus Orosius,” and Euclid’s Geometry, do the same.’ He did not pursue his business mechanically. When employed in arranging the Urbino library he used, for comparison, beside the inventories of the Vaticana and San Marco, those of Pavia and Oxford.[397] In the number of new manuscripts which he caused to be prepared, there was unavoidably a great deal of carelessness. Angelo Poliziano complains once in the dictata composed in 1481 for Piero de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s son, of the incorrectness of the Urbino manuscripts;[398] a complaint which Bottari made, in the last century, in reference to the codex of Virgil belonging to the time of Vespasiano. But it would be unjust to lay the blame of this on him. Down to his latest years he was continually employed by Cosimo’s son and grandson, and seems to have been considered the first literary connoisseur in Florence. When an old man, in 1487 and 1490, he presented several books to the library of San Marco, of which he had himself witnessed the origin.[399]