M. Tursi, L’antica biblioteca di San Paolo in Monte a Bologna: ricerche preliminari sul fondo manoscritto, in «Gazette du livre médiéval» 67 (2021-2023), pp. 64-114

The article aims to be a starting point for the study of the manuscript heritage that belonged to the ancient library of the Observant Franciscan convent of San Paolo in Monte, in Bologna. The convent, founded at the beginning of the 15th century, was in fact equipped with a rich library, which has never been sufficiently studied until now, and of which the two main city libraries (the University Library of Bologna and the Archiginnasio) retain numerous traces. A first partial list of the volumes hosted by the convent is preserved in ms BAV, Barb. lat. 3185: it was written at the beginning of the 16th century by an Italian humanist named Fabio Vigili and edited, in 1943, by M.H. Laurent. To fill the absence of sources regarding the consistency of this library for the following centuries, a new inventory is presented here, identified in the ms BAV, Vat. lat. 11271, and drawn up in 1600 at the request of the Sacred Congregation of the Index. The attribution of this inventory, hitherto considered anonymous, to the library of S. Paolo in Monte is confirmed not only by the mention of a Bible belonging to the friar Marco Fantuzzi of Bologna and still present in the convent in 1625, but also by the finding of numerous concordances with the Vigili's list. Finally, an overview of the manuscripts identified to date is provided (57), attaching a table of concordances between the ancient inventories and their transcription.