[Chapter III]
Lists of Books Entitled "Bibliotheca"
The listing of books that contain the word Bibliotheca in their titles is a special bibliographical development in the seventeenth century and continues into the eighteenth. It might have led by easy stages to making a bibliography of bibliographies, but it unfortunately attracted little notice and maintained a tenuous existence for only about a century. The word bibliotheca, which often appears in titles, has such more or less bibliographical meanings as bibliography, subject index, catalogue of a public or private library, and collection of materials dealing with a particular subject. Consequently, a list of books entitled bibliotheca has much in common with a list of reference works and, more particularly, a bibliography of bibliographies. Although there was no proper place for such a list in his Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, Philip Labbé included one under the heading Bibliotheca in an alphabet of authors.[93] This is an early example of a list of books chosen according to their titles.
Labbé limited himself strictly to works of a bibliographical nature. He did not, for example, include the collections of the church fathers that were very familiar to him, although they bore the title Bibliotheca. Many books that he cites are hard to identify: some titles seem to have been made up and others refer to books that were never printed. Labbé uses the term bibliotheca so loosely that we do not always know whether he is referring to a library and its catalogue (for example, Bibliotheca Augustana may mean the library or may be a short title for its catalogue) or a book (for example, Conrad Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis). In either case, he is thinking as a bibliographer, and we can easily conceive the enlargement of his list into a bibliography of bibliographies.
Labbé's classification of books entitled bibliotheca shows a remarkable understanding of their different kinds and calls attention to their remarkable variety. I cannot easily cite an equally instructive and suggestive review of bibliographies.[94] Labbé's classification is as follows: (1) Bibliothecae named for places (vel a locis dictae): Augustana,[95] Floriacensis,[96] Ingolstadiensis,[97] etc.: (2) bibliothecae named for persons (vel a personis): Borromaea,[98] Bodleiana,[99] Thuana,[100] etc.; (3) bibliothecae named for rulers (vel a principibus): Regia Gallica,[101] Caesarea,[102] Bavarica,[103] etc.; (4) bibliothecae named for religious orders (vel a Ordinibus Sacris): Augustiniana,[104] Carmelitica,[105] etc.; (5) bibliothecae named according to the subjects with which they deal (vel a materia quam tractant): Chymica,[106] Concionatoria,[107] Juridica,[108] etc.; (6) bibliothecae named according to their arrangement or like circumstances (vel a forma similibusve circumstantiis): Classica,[109] Selecta,[110] Universalis.[111]
The anonymous author of The Newly Opened Library (Die neu-eröffnete Bibliothec), in which good information about libraries as well as convenient directions for acquiring, maintaining, and using them are put into the hands of students and inquiring friends. To which are added: the chief European libraries and what travelers ought to notice in visits to them (1702) hit upon the same idea of listing bibliothecae.[112] In this book a special section or appendix labelled "A List of Authors Who Have Written Books Entitled 'Bibliotheca' and Books about Libraries (Series Authorum qui Bibliothecas & de Bibliothecis scripserunt)" names books called bibliotheca, catalogues of libraries, and treatises on library science. The selection is obviously even more definitely bibliographical in character than Labbé's list had been. The compiler arranges the titles alphabetically according to the author's last names or, in the case of an anonymous work, according to an important word in the title. This arrangement and the choice of titles show that he had no knowledge of Labbé. Like Labbé, he includes none of the collections of texts that were entitled bibliotheca.
Our author begins with Valerius Andreas, Bibliotheca Belgica (1643), a biobibliographical dictionary of writers in the Low Countries. In the letter "A" he includes the Augustanae Bibliothecae Catalogus (1633), which he also enters under the name of the compiler, Elias Ehinger, librarian at Augsburg. He cites the Bibliothèque universelle, a critical journal edited by Jean Leclerc, because the title contains the word Bibliothèque. Such titles show that he was thinking in bibliographical terms, for Andreas's book and the Augsburg catalogue are bibliographies and Leclerc's journal was a review of current publications.
The titles in this list are interesting because some are rarely mentioned and others are difficult to track down. Examples are "Augusti sereniss. Ducis Brunsvicensis Bibliothecae Sciagraphia, Bibliothecae Catalogus. Wolfenb. 1650. in 4-to;"[113] "Henricii Furenii Bibliotheca Medica." Hafn. 1659. in 4-to;[114] "Hamburgensis Bibliothecae scripta memoria." Hamb. 1651. fol.;[115] and Bartol. "Moseri Thesaurus Bibliatricus seu Bibliotheca gemina Onomastica & Classica." Dilingii. fol.[116] The list includes a few autobibliographies, for example, those written by such librarians and bibliographers as Peter Lambeck (Lambecius) and Philip Labbé. The most surprising title that the compiler names is "Joan. Brunderii [sic] index librorum MS quae in Bibliothecis Belgicis extant."[117] This union catalogue of manuscripts owned in the Low Countries was made by the Belgian Dominican Johannes Bunderius or Bunderus (b. 1481 or 1482, d. 1557). Down to 1666 it is mentioned occasionally by men who had consulted it, but our author probably never saw it and no fragment of it is known to have survived the dispersal of Anton Sander's library. A reference to such a manuscript was by no means an idle display of erudition. Allusions in various seventeenth-century works show that men used this union catalogue. For example, the Spaniard Pedro de Alva y Astorga, the author of several very rare encyclopedic works, which were published at Madrid and Louvain, drew upon it, and the Italian Antonio Possevino quoted it in his Apparatus sacer.
This curious list in Die neu-eröffnete Bibliothec shows some signs of carelessness. Its compiler has not seen all the books in it. For example, he assigns Petrus Bertius's catalogue of the university library at Leyden to 1591 instead of 1595 (this error is probably a slip of the pen) and mentions the famous ghosts announced by Jodocus a Dudinck. He credits the Philobiblon to both Richard de Bury and Richard Dunelmensis (De Bury's name as Bishop of Durham). With all its faults, this "Series" is nevertheless a respectable piece of work by a man who saw clearly the nature of a bibliography of bibliographies.