Histoire universelle de la destruction de livres -BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Libraries Before Alexandria. Ancient Near Eastern Traditions. ed. K. Ryholt and G. Barjamovic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019

The creation of the Library of Alexandria is widely regarded as one of the great achievements in the history of humankind-a giant endeavour to amass all known literature and scholarly texts in one central location so as to preserve it and make it available for the public. In turn, this event has been viewed as a historical turning point that separates the ancient world from classical antiquity. Standard works on the library continue to present the idea behind the institution as novel and, at least implicitly, a product of Greek thought.¹ Yet, although the scale of the collection in Alexandria seems to have been unprecedented, the notion of creating central repositories of knowledge, while perhaps new to Greek tradition, was age-old in the Near East where the building was erected. Here the existence of libraries can be traced back another three millennia, and the creation of the Library in Alexandria was not as much the beginning of an intellectual adventure as the impressive culmination of a long tradition. Seen in this context, it is no coincidence that the Library of Alexandria was built in Egypt and not in Greece itself. Ptolemy I established for himself a kingdom in a region that had both an ancient tradition of libraries and an outstanding reputation for wisdom in the Mediterranean world. For generations, Greeks philosophers had travelled to Egypt in their quest for knowledge, to the point where it became a recurrent theme or idea in contemporary ¹ Cf. e.g. the optimistic account by El-Abbadi 1990 and his 2016 article for Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as Casson 2001: 31f. MacLeod 2004 is slightly more careful regarding the novelty and Greekness of the Library, but also tends to take ancient sources at face value, cf. e.g. pp. 4-5. Even the critical article by Johnston 2014 refers to the 'invention of the library' (passim) and claims that for 'the first time we can see a library as an institution', building on a somewhat circular definition of the term 'library' itself (p. 356). A new and more sober approach to the historiography was opened up by Bagnall 2002 with a meticulous dismantling of the written tradition on what he called a 'Library of Dreams'.

2024

Join us on Wednesday, 3 july for our four panels on Monastic Libraries & Book Collections in times of Crisis! at @IMC_L2024! Description These sessions focus on religious communities’ responses to crises in relation to monastic libraries and book collections. We aim to investigate what happened to medieval convent libraries and book collections in times of peril during the Middle Ages, but also the early modern period and up until our time. Session I examine in what way religious communities and some specific religious leaders responded to crises by stimulating desire for knowledge preservation and systematization. Through the analysis of eight donation lists, Benjamin Bertrand examines the role of abbots or bishops in the Anglo-Norman world in the 11th and 12th centuries in reforming their libraries to respond to a changing cultural atmosphere. René Hernández explores the role of library catalogues as a form of securing the agency of readers within medieval book collections. This talk will compare the catalogues of the Franciscan libraries of Assisi (1381), Padua (1396, 1449) and the Libro de los epítomes of Hernando Colón (c. 1539). Finally, Giovanni Verri will discuss the literary works that may have been kept in the Augustinian canonry of Helgafel in Iceland, through an analysis of the church registers (máldagar) and other documents. Session II discusses the acquisition, commission, production, and use of devotional, liturgical and theological books in response to the challenges and crises faced by religious communities. Some of the papers gathered adopt explicitly gendered approaches to crisis in religious communities and consider the continuities and disruptions in production of manuscripts, re-use, and function of books within these communities. Katie Bugyis analyses the motivation behind the acquisition and commission of liturgical, devotional and theological texts by Sibyl de Fenton, abbess of Barking abbey (r. 1393-1419) in times of political, economic, and religious turmoil. This paper considers Sybil’s need to respond to questions of her sacramental authority, particularly to address new and pressing questions about the sacrament of penance. Minela Fulurija Vučić will explore the production of manuscripts in vernacular for convents in Dubrovnik from the 14th to the 18th century, and the liturgical and devotional practices of these nuns through these sources. Finally, Katharine C. Chandler will analyse the creation, use, and afterlife of two precious liturgical sources (MS Lewis E 8 and Morgan MS M.115) part of a set of manuscript graduals copied for the Chartreuse de Champmol around 1470, as witness to the changing textual process of liturgical invention through the late Middle Ages and the early modern era. Session III discusses how at certain times, crises' effects were incremental in book collections of various religious institutions, with the reception of texts that were adapted to new contexts. Phillis will discuss the circulation and copy of the Lamentum Lacrymabile (c. 1150-c. 1153), written in response to the Second Crusade, in relation to changing perceptions of crises in 12th century Flemish religious communities. Brianna Cano analyses the dissemination and use among New Spain nuns of the translation of the Legenda Maior of Catherine of Siena commissioned by Cisneros and the impact of this text on both the visual culture of the convent and the liturgical performance in these communities. Victoria Legkikk explores the circulation of liturgical traditions and the networks between monastic libraries of Rus, Bulgaria and Serbia. Finally, Zhang Fu discusses the publication and circulation of the Jingshan zang 徑山藏, a special version of the whole Buddhist canon, the Tripiṭaka, as a response to social crisis and religious eschatology. Session IV explores how at certain times, these changes were detrimental, and the original context of collections was lost. Papers in this part look at a the Nachleben of medieval and early modern manuscripts, their dispersion and loss in times of peril, their re-assembly and their reinterpretation in their new locations. Katrin Janz Wenig discusses the Zacharias Konrad of Uffenbach’s manuscript collection at the State Library in Hamburg, and the role of this important collector in saving important manuscripts and fragments from late medieval Rhenish monasteries. Anna Michlalchuck (National School of Charters) analyses how the manuscripts and the archives collected by the Maurists were able to «survive» the «difficult» times of the French revolution. Finally, Suzan Folkers studies the processes of safekeeping and exchange of the book collections from the houses of the Sisters of the common life at Deventer and the monastery of canonesses regular of Diepenveen, during the occupation of these towns by Spanish soldiers and the Dutch Revolt (c. 1560-1600). She will also look at how the sisters' books made it into the town's library.

1989

A lecture given in honour of Miss Ana Healey on the occasion of her retirement as Librarian of the Institute of Classical Studies / Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies in 1989. The original lecture contained slides and the author has revised the text and added in further images in April 2015. This lecture is referred to in the obituary of Ana Healey written by Sue Willetts from the Institute of Classical Studies Library which will appear in the online CUCD Bulletin for 2015

Encyclopedia of Libraries, Librarianship, and Information Science

Since Antiquity, libraries have constituted a vital and organic part of the overall organization of an ecclesiastical or civic community. The accessibility and consultation of knowledge was at the forefront of early functioning societies. With the gradual dissolution of the Roman Empire, however, a substantial shift from pagan to Christian forms of socioeconomic as well as political circumstances occurred that prompted the establishment of collections of books which pertained to monastic communities. Until the recalibration of erudition through the first generation of scholars and erudite intellectuals, who sought a substantial reappropriation of Rome's antiquarian heritage in the later 14th century, these monastic libraries determined the pace of the progression of ecclesiastical as well as civic erudition. With the gradual formation of city-states and other forms of sovereign as well as self-governing communal governments, another paradigm in the evolution of libraries was introduced that would decisively delineate the features of the emerging 'Renaissance Library'. The following entry thus presents this development of libraries from the viewpoint of an entanglement between their institutional evolution and the respective actors engaged in the personnel of the administration and organization of book and manuscript collections from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

Library awareness is a term I coined in an attempt to capture the complexity of Jewish attitudes towards books and libraries (although it is not limited only to Jewish libraries). 1 It is the answer to the question what is a library for you, the way in which libraries are perceived in a text, and derivative from it -in a certain place and a time. Library awareness is dynamic and changing. It has complicated relations with the reality of libraries, but it is, if at all, in the metal world of ideas. This paper will focus on library awareness in Jewish culture since the medieval period.

Cromohs: Cyber Review of Modern Historiography, 2023

This introduction lays the foundation for a collection of high-quality research papers, presenting novel findings, innovative scientific approaches, and the latest developments in the field of the history of Catholic censorship, libricide, and the preservation of Hebrew books during late medieval and early modern Italy. The primary objective of this thematic section is to investigate diverse topics, including the Catholic censorship and expurgation of Hebrew texts, books, and documents. Additionally, it explores the repurposing of these materials in book bindings and notary files, shedding light on how Digital Humanities facilitates the recovery of manuscripts or printed books that would otherwise be lost to history.

in Flavia Ruani and Joseph Sanzo (eds.), Dangerous Books: Scribal Activity and Religious Boundaries in Late Antiquity and Beyond,” Henoch 39 (2/2017), 247-69 , 2017

Theme Section / Sezione monografica literacy" as the process through which late antique book cultures facilitated the dissemination of religious practices and ideas across the roman empire. finally, inspired by roger chartier's work on the history of the book, i will consider book order as the late-antique network of practices that shaped religious literacy. according to roger chartier, the passage from writing and composing to material book takes place according to an "order" that reproduces itself in the relation between texts and authors: "The book always aims at installing an order, whether it is the order in which it is deciphered, the order in which it is to be understood, or the order intended by the authority who commanded or permitted the work." 3 as objects and products of any given historical period, books enclose a multilayered history of writing and reading practices, of "human agency" filtered and expressed through traditional ways of acquiring, reproducing, and indexing knowledge, and of limitations in their material production. 4 in ancient book production, the medium, in its forms of "human and institutional interactions," influences the transmission of enclosed information and endures further alterations from the original message. 5 several instances will help the reader identify traces of the late antique "order of books" in ancient texts. To start with an example from a roman pagan context, emperor domitian put arulenus rusticus and Herennius senecius to death for having written positive biographies of his enemies, Paetus Thrasea and Priscus Helvidius; he also set their books on fire (Taci-3 r. chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries (stanford, calif: stanford University Press, 2 nd ed. 2014), p. vIII. 4 for scholars who take their expertise in book history into a present whose computers, e-books and electronic readers bring nightmares to supporters of more traditional formats; see r. chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), esp. pp. 6-24: chartier situates the electronic revolution in the longue durée of book history, as a stage after the birth of the codex, printing revolution, and even a "revolution in reading" -a post-encyclopedic shift from intensive to extensive, generalized reading, and predicts a redefinition of major bookish practices, see, also, a. Grafton, Codex in Crisis (new york: The crumpled Press, 2008); in a love letter to past and present bookish curiosity and to inextinguishable appetite for literacy, Grafton places Google Books and Wikipedia in the larger historical context of repeated and ambitious efforts to index knowledge and of the natural shortcomings, gains, and losses of creating a universal library. 5 see a. Grafton -m.H. Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (cambridge, mass: belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), esp. pp. 178-243, for early christian models of ecclesiastical learning and their connection to codex; m.H. Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship (chicago: The University of chicago Press, 2006), esp. pp. 167-200, for the Jerome's scholarship and the formation of a "monastic order of books." see also d.f. mckenzie Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (cambridge: cambridge University Press, 1986; 2 nd ed., 1999) for the ways in which medium shapes the message in bibliography, and r. chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practice (baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), esp. pp. 81-89 for an analysis of mckenzie's contribution to cultural history. finally, see P.m. Green, Medium and Message Reconsidered: The Changing Functions of Classical Translation (new orleans: The Graduate school of Tulane University, 1986), for the ancient and modern translators' inevitable subjection to medium and audience.

Judaica Librarianship, 2016

"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism," Walter Benjamin famously declared (Benjamin 1968 [1940], 262). Chronicling the looting, appropriation, and preservation of books and manuscripts that came to enrich Jerusalem's Jewish National and University Library (JNUL) collections during pre-statehood and early statehood years, Gish Amit's important, bold and deeply researched book, Ex Libris, provides an upsetting demonstration of Benjamin's dictum. Originating as the author's Ph.D. dissertation at the Department of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and based on extensive archival research and oral history, the book tells not one but three separate stories: the first chronicles the process by which heirless Jewish books and manuscripts, which had been confiscated by the Nazis and later recovered in postwar Germany by the Allies and various Jewish organizations, found their way to the stacks of the JNUL 1 (chapter 1); the second is the story of approximately 70,000 books looted from Palestinian homes and educational institutions during the 1948 War and its immediate aftermath (chapter 2); and the third is the story of the confiscation and theft of Torah scrolls, Judaica ornaments, rare books, and manuscripts belonging to Yemenite Jews in 1949-1950 (chapter 3).