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

FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURY LIBRARIES 297
In content these libraries of the so-called renaissance of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may thus be seen to reveal no
sharp line of cleavage between the interests of these centuries from
those immediately preceding. The humanistic works (litterae
humaniores), products of the enthusiasm for and renewed interest
in the classics of Greek and Roman antiquity, supplemented but did
not replace the hallowed classics of the more immediate past. The
ducal and princely collectors continued to be guided in large part
in their choice of books by the traditional tastes of their immediate
chronological predecessors. Their libraries adhered to the pattern
for earlier ecclesiastical establishments in the formula provided by
Thomas of Sarzana. Theology was still the mainstay, and scholastic
interests appeared side by side with those of humanism. The
Bible and St. Augustine continued to hold first place among the
most universally read books; while Aristotle and medieval compendia
or encyclopedias retained the venerable regard of the great
majority of the reading public. Occult sciences were still as popular
as they had been earlier and as they were to continue to be into
the succeeding centuries. The bulk of the collections remained
Latin in their general makeup although the rehabilitation of Greek
studies and the growing interest in textual criticism is reflected in
the introduction of Greek, Hebrew, and in rare instances, Arabic
and Aramaic codices into a chosen few of the libraries, while the
ducal and princely collectors revealed a strong leaning toward the
vernaculars of which French and Tuscan were the most favored. In
large part the libraries reflect the partiality of their owners for
ancient and medieval classics, thus adhering to the dictum of
Richard de Bury, that most ardent of fourteenth century bibliophiles,
who "loved codices more than florins," that "it is more
desirable to investigate the well tested labors of the ancients, than
to explore the novelties of the moderns."'74 But most of all these
libraries in their commingling of the classics of Greek and Roman
antiquity with the revered ecclesiastical treasures of the more immediate
past, provide an illuminating example of that "picturesque
union of contrasts [the mixture of the two traditions, sacred and
profane] that is so characteristic of the art at the close of the fifteenth
century."175
Hunter College.
174Philobiblon, tr. E. C. Thomas (London, 1925), 56; 65.
175 Walter Pater, The Renaissance, Modern Library, 39.
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