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PREFACE TO THE 3RD EDITION (1964/87)
 



[Reprint of the third edition

PUBLISHER'S NOTE (1987)


A fourth, greatly expanded edition of this essential reference work is currently in preparation, and we estimate that it will be published at the end of the decade. The supply of the third edition has been exhausted, but the book remains in steady demand. So we have decided to issue this reprint in an extremely small pressrun, to meet the demand for copies and to keep the book in print until the fourth edition is ready.

Any corrections for the next edition would be received gratefully by the author and the publisher.

Canisius Hall Fordham University Press

1 VI 1987]

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION (1964)

by Paul Oskar Kristeller

When the revised edition of this bibliography, published as a separate book in 1960, nearly went out of print, Father E. A. Quain, S. J. invited me to gather further material that would be added as a supplement to a reprint of the former edition. In this supplement, I shall attempt to correct some of the more important misprints and errors of the 1960 edition, and to give a number of additional entries that have either been newly published, or that have come to my attention but recently. I shall give both corrections and additions in the order of the 1960 edition, referring to its pages throughout. The entries contained among the Addenda of the 1960 edition (pp. 233-234) will also be included in this supplement, in their proper places.

The new material in this volume will be found beginning at p. 233, divided into Sections A, B and C, each entry under the page number where it would fit in the body of the book. We regret that this will be of some slight inconvenience to scholars using the book since for full information on a particular item, he will have to look in two places. However, our desire to make this additional material available had to be confronted with the very substantial cost of resetting the whole book and we trust that we will be accorded the reader's indulgent understanding.

The edition of 1960 has had on the whole a friendly reception from colleagues and librarians, and even from reviewers. Its shortcomings have been pointed out, including a few of which I had been aware from the beginning. Yet I shall not be able to remove some of the worst of these deficiencies. It is not feasible to analyze completely all titles in Section B for the libraries they cover, or even to make cross references in all cases where they have been analyzed. The cross references in Section C must be limited to those general titles which contain substantial information on the respective collections. Exceptions have been made only for small collections, and for collections, or parts of collections, that have no complete printed catalogues. Moreover, it would have been much preferable to give cross references for each library, rather than for the cities only, but it would have been very complicated to carry out this principle. Hence I must warn the user once more that in some instances very substantial catalogues are described in Section B and covered only by cross references under the city in which the respective library is located.

There is no such thing as a complete bibliography, and the inclusion or exclusion of specific titles is evidently often a matter of subjective judgment or arbitrary decision. Since some reviewers have criticized me for not listing certain titles which I had considered and intentionally excluded as not relevant, I should like to explain that I have followed only two criteria in choosing a given entry for inclusion: it may either help a scholar to locate a manuscript containing a text in which he is interested, or it may help him to find a catalogue description of a manuscript which he knows already. Everything else I have intentionally omitted, especially studies that deal exclusively with the history of libraries or with palaeography, with illuminations or bindings, with copyists or former owners. Among the studies of this kind, I have included only those that contain specific information on the content and location of extant manuscripts. For this reason, I have omitted most studies and editions of old library inventories, that is, all those that fail to indicate the present location and identity of the manuscripts listed. I have included only a few exhibition catalogues on account of the mss. they describe, and even fewer sales catalogues. The latter often do describe interesting mss., but they are as a rule hard to trace, and the catalogues are hence of less immediate use than those of more or less permanent collections. In view of the scope of this bibliography that is expressed in its title, I have omitted most descriptions of archival material, except for the collections of manuscript books, or of literary documents, that are preserved in archives rather than in libraries. I have omitted studies of individual mss. since they are too numerous, and lists of mss. of a single author because they can be easily found through bibliographies. In doubtful cases, I have tended to decide for inclusion, as in the case of cross references, when small or relatively unknown collections are involved. I have also excluded catalogues of manuscripts in languages other than Latin although Greek and vernacular manuscripts often do contain Latin texts. There was no need to list catalogues of Greek manuscripts since they have been adequately described by Marcel Richard (Répertoire des Bibliothèques et des Catalogues de Manuscrits Grecs, 2nd ed., Paris 1958). Since there is no comparable bibliography for vernacular manuscripts, I have occasionally included catalogues of French, German or Spanish, and especially of Italian manuscripts when they seemed to be of potential interest for the study of Latin texts or authors.

Also the division between Sections A and B seems to have puzzled some users and reviewers, and hence to call for another explanation. I admit that the division is arbitrary in some instances. Yet I should like to explain that I put Borchling or Priebsch into Section A because they do not describe a single manuscript relevant to this bibliography, but do give information on the existence or strength of certain collections that may contain mss. of the type concerning us. On the other hand, Byvanck is in Section B because he does describe some mss. relevant to our task.

I have followed the practice of affixing an asterisk to those cities whose libraries I do not know at first hand, and to those libraries which I have not visited. Since this fact concerns the degree of responsibility I can assume for the accuracy of the information supplied, I should like to list the cities and libraries which I have visited since 1960, and which should therefore have their asterisk removed (including a few that I visited before 1960 and that had received an asterisk by mistake): Admont, Ancona, Aschaffenburg, Athens, Belluno, Berlin (Kunstbibliothek), Bonn, Budapest, Chantilly, Chapel Hill, Chicago, Donaueschingen, Eugene, Fiesole, Fischbach, Freiburg (Stadtarchiv and Augustinermuseum), Fribourg (Cordeliers), Fritzlar, Fulda (Priesterseminar), Hannover (Kestner-Museum), Innsbruck (Staatsarchiv, Servitenkloster, Ferdinandeum, Stift Wilten), Isny, Istanbaul, Ithaca, Konstanz, Lambach, Lausanne, London (College of Arms, Guildhall Library, Inner Temple, Lincoln's Inn, Sir John Soane's Museum), Louvain, Lugano, Mantova (Archivio di Stato), Mariemont, Modena (Accademia delle Scienze, Archivio del Comune, Biblioteca Capitolare, Raccolta Molza-Viti), Monza, Munich (Nationalmuseum), Naples (Oratoriana), Oxford (Pembroke College), Parma (Archivio di Stato), Pienza, Recanati, Rome (S. Maria sopra Minerva, S. Sabina), Rottenburg, San Daniele, Sankt Gallen, Sankt Paul, Sarnen, Schwaz, Sion, Toronto, Tübingen (Wilhelmsstift), Urbana, Vigevano, Wien (Dominikanerkonvent, Staatsarchiv), Würzburg, Zürich (Staatsarchiv).

Through an oversight, I have used in the 1960 edition and not explained the following abbreviation: AB stands for Accaademie e Biblioteche and refers to the list of catalogues published in that periodical and described on p. 3 of the 1960 edition.

In conclusion, I should like to thank all those scholars and librarians, some of them known to me and others unknown, who reviewed my bibliography or who wrote to me, and to whom I am indebted for numerous corrections and additions that went into the present supplement: Zofia Ameisenowa (Cracow), Lilian Anderson (Boston), Rev. Rudolf Arbesmann O. S. A. (Fordham University), Luise Banti (Floence), Ludwig Bieler (Dublin), Giuseppe Billanovich (Milan), Emilie Boer (Berlin), P. Bohigas (Barcelona), W. H. Bond (Harvard University Library), Leicester Bradner (Brown University), Geoffrey Bullough (London), W. Bulst (Heidelberg), Rolf Burmeister (Hamburg), F. de A. Carreas (Valencia), Cecil Clough (Birmingham), Rev. M. Coens (Brussels), F. Edward Cranz (Connecticut College), A. Daneu Lattanzi (Palermo), H. Deckert (Dresden), R. G. Dennis (Harvard University Library), Sheila Edmunds (Smith College), Rev. Francis Firth (St. Michael's College, Toronto), Hugo Friedrich (Freiburg), Rev. A. García y García (Salamanca), H. Gerson (The Hague), Felix Gilbert (Institute for Advanced Study), H. M. Goldbrunner (Rome), M. A. Goukovsky (Leningrad), Helga Hajdu Juhasz (Budapest), Lewis Hanke (Columbia University), Richard Harrier (New York University), John Harris (London), R. Hayes (Dublin), Elisabeth Feist Hirsch (Trenton State College), Rudolf Hirsch (University of Pennsylvania Library), Fritz Hoffmann (Erfurt), W. Hörmann (Munich), R. W. Hunt (Oxford), James J. John (Cornell University), Neil Ker (Oxford), Edwin Knowles (Pratt Institute), Josef Koch (Cologne), Imrich Kotvan (Bratislava), Stephan Kuttner (Yale University), Dom Jean Leclerq (Clervaux), the late Paul Lehmann (Munich), Edward R. Lerner (Queens College), Robert E. Lewis Jr. (Indiana University), Maria Teresa Liaci (Lecce), Karl Manitius (Dresden), F. De Marco (Rome), Herbert Matsen (Converse College), Otto Mazal (Vienna), Rev. Vottorino Meneghin (Venice), Anne Marie Meyer (London), Kathleen Morand (Institute for Advanced Study), Helen Northup (University of Wisconsin Library), Kåre Olsen (Copenhagen), G. N. Orsini (University of Wisconsin), B. Paradisi (Naples), George Parks (Queens College), Bernard M. Peebles (Catholic University of America), Emma Pirani (Milan), Alessandro Pratesi (Bari), Serafino Prete (Bologna), Sesto Prete (Fordham University), Rev. Tarcisius Rattler (Augustinian Institute, New York), Robert Raymo (New York University), Pier Giorgio Ricci (Florence), March. Roberto Ridolfi (Florence), Bernard M. Rosenthal (New York), Braxton Ross (Institute for Advanced Study), L. Rossetti (Padua), Rev. Francis Roth O. S. A. (Augustinian Institute, New York), J. Rott (Strasbourg), Arthur Schiller (Columbia University), Peter L. Schmidt (Kiel), Charles Schmitt (Fordham University), R. J. Schoeck (University of Toronto), Mrs. Joan Selby (University of British Columbia Library), Eugene Sheehy (Columbia University Library), Keith Sinclair (Sydney), Josef Soudek (Queens College), Jaroslav vSoula (Jasenná, Czechoslovakia), R. D. Sweeney (Detroit), R. Sylvester (Yale University), Charles De Tolnay (Princeton), T. Tomasic (Paris), Rev. Damasus Trapp (Augustinian Institute, New York), K. Van Acker (Ghent), Giuseppe Velli (Smith College), Mlle Jeanne Vielliard (Paris), John Waddell (Columbia University Library), Luitpold Wallach (Marquatte University), Sister Agnes Clare Way (Our Lady of the Lake College, San Antonio), Bernard Weinberg (University of Chicago), Paul Wilper (Cologne), C. E. Wright (London). I may be permitted to add a general, but not less heartfelt expression of gratitude to the numerous librarians in many countries who answered my queries and gave or sent me information on the printed or unpublished catalogues of their own libraries.

New York, Columbia University

1964


Preface to the 4th edition (Kristeller 1993) | Preface to the revised edition (1959)