The Intellectual Interests Reflected in Libraries of the Fourteenth and ...

FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURY LIBRARIES 267
of the duke of Urbino had ninety-three Hebrew items," or as many
in Hebrew as it had in Greek. Pietro da Montagnana at Padua had
ten;45 and George Valla had some thirty volumes which included
Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Syriac texts.46 Beyond the Alps, the
most significant collection was that of the one hundred and twenty
Hebrew manuscripts that were preserved at Avignon by Urban V
(1369)." But elsewhere the situation was much the same as for
Greek. In England, Hebrew texts of the Scriptures were to be
found scattered here and there in the libraries of various religious
houses. M. R. James has pointed out that Psalters in Hebrew and
Latin were far from rare and that Hebrew books in general were
more commonly available than Greek books." But no collection of
any size among Christian scholars is recorded before the close of
the fifteenth century. In German lands such collections were also
rare. Both Nicholas of Cusa, who had five Hebrew manuscripts,49
and John Reuchlin, who produced the first Hebrew grammar for
Latin scholars, and was interested in the study of the Hebrew texts
of the Bible, had had to resort to Italy for the necessary books in
that language. Although Reuchlin's library which belongs to the
end of the fifteenth and the early sixteenth century is said to have
been celebrated for its oriental treasures, only thirty-six such works
appear in the inventory published by Karl Christ.50 Outside of the
few texts in Arabic, and Aramaic, listed in the library of Pico della
Mirandola, and in that of George Valla,5" these rarely appear in the
inventories.
Much more generally widespread than either Greek or Hebrew
books except in the libraries of Italian humanists were the vernaculars.52
Volumes in French, Provengal, Spanish, Tuscan and other
44Ibid., 39, note 11; Vespasiano, Vite, I (Coll. di op. ined. o rare, vol. 68, 1892),
301. According to Vespasiano, the Hebrew books included texts of the Bible, and
its commentaries; books in medicine, philosophy, and every other possible subject.
45 R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici Latini e Greci ne'secoli XIV e XV
(1905), 187.
46 P. Kibre, op. cit., 39, note 12.
47 Miintz et Fabre, La bibliothegque du Vatican au XVe siecle, p. v; M. Faucon,
La librairie des papes d'Avignon (Paris, 1886), 1, 81, 176 (no. 1177; not 1180 as
indicated by Faucon), 191; 217.
48 M. R. James, The ancient libraries of Canterbury and Dover, p. lxxxv.
49 Kraus in Serapeum, XXVI (1865), 99-100.
50 "vDie Bibliothek Reuchlins in Pforzheim," Centralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen,
LII (1924), 36-51. Christ suggests that the inventory is incomplete.
51 P. Kibre, op. cit., 39.
52 The paucity of such works in Pico's library has already been noted in my
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