The large Canonici collection of MSS. was obtained from Venice in this
year, for the sum of £5444, a purchase unprecedented in greatness in the
history of the Library[293]. The collection was formed by Matheo Luigi
Canonici, a Venetian Jesuit, who was born in 1727 and died in Sept. 1805
or 1806. Indefatigable in his passion for antiquities, he first formed a
Museum of statues and of medals at Parma, but, in consequence of the
Jesuits being expelled from the State, this was sold to the government.
He then at Bologna set himself to collect religious objects of interest,
and had succeeded to some extent, when the rector of his society
observed to him that such a collection was little suitable to a poor
monk, and he consequently disposed of it to a Roman prince. Finally, at
Venice, he commenced the gathering of a library, in which it is said, as
one evidence of its extent, there were more than four thousand Bibles
written in fifty-two languages[294].
The MSS. purchased by the Bodleian amount in number to about 2045.
Dibdin, almost immediately upon the acquisition, noticed it thus[295]:--
'They have recently acquired a very curious and valuable collection
of MSS., which formerly belonged to an ex-Jesuit Abbé, who intended
(had he lived to have seen the restoration of the order of the
Jesuits) to have presented them to the Jesuits' College at Venice.
Neither pains nor expense were spared among his brethren, in all
parts of the world, to make the collection, on that account, as
perfect as possible.'
In Greek there are 128 volumes, chiefly of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, with a few of earlier date, including two _Evangelistaria_
assigned by Montfaucon to the ninth century. Of Latin classical authors
and Mediæval poets there are 311 volumes; some of those of the former
class are of great age and value, notably a Virgil of the tenth century
(No. 50). Ninety-three MSS. form the class of Latin Bibles; the finest
of these are, one written in 1178 for the church of SS. Mary and Pancras
in Ranshoven, and another, in five very large folio volumes, written and
illuminated in France, in the years 1507-1511. Of Latin ecclesiastical
writers and Fathers there are 232 volumes; and of Latin miscellanies
(chiefly in medicine, philosophy and science, theology, and _belles
lettres_, with scarcely anything of an historical character), 576
volumes. Of all these classes a catalogue was published by Mr. Coxe in
1854, forming part iii. of the new general Catalogue of MSS.
Another division consists of Liturgical books. In this class there are
now 400 volumes, but about 130 of these were added from the Rawlinson
collection. They consist chiefly of _Horæ_, Breviaries, Missals, and
Psalters, with a few other service-books; most of those which belonged
to Canonici being 'secundum usum Romanum.' No catalogue of this series
has, as yet, been made.
A sixth division comprehends 300 Italian MSS. (including five in
Spanish) of which a very elaborate catalogue was compiled, as a labour
of love, by the Count Alessandro Mortara, during the years of his stay
in Oxford[296]. His MS. was bought after his death from his executor the
Abate Giuseppe Manuzzi, of Florence, for £201, in the year 1858; it was
afterwards put to press under the care of the accomplished Italian
scholar, and intimate friend of Count Mortara, Dr. H. Wellesley, the
late Principal of New Inn Hall, and appeared, with an Italian preface by
him giving some account of the whole collection, in one volume quarto
(158 pages,) in 1864.
The last portion of the collection consists of 135 Oriental MSS.,
chiefly valuable Hebrew books on vellum. One of these (No. 78) is a copy
of Maimonides' Commentary on the Law, in fourteen books, which is dated
1366. Seven of the Biblical volumes are noticed in De Rossi's _Variæ
Lectiones Veteris Testamenti_. The few Arabic MSS. are described in Dr.
Pusey's Continuation of Nicol's Catalogue.
A curious story of the recovery, amidst these books, of some leaves
belonging to a printed vellum Bible already in the Library, will be
found related under the year 1750. A few other MSS. from Canonici's
library were sold by auction, with some from Saibante's, in London, in
1821. And many relating to Italian and Venetian history, which were at
first retained by one of the heirs, passed afterwards into the hands of
the Rev. Walter Sneyd, of Baginton, Warwickshire, their present
possessor. A MS. volume of notices of the Canonici library, drawn up by
Signor Lorenzi, of Venice, was bought by the Bodleian, in 1859, for ten
guineas[297].
A MS. of Suidas, of the fifteenth century, was purchased for £220 10_s._
Another acquisition was a French translation, made in 1417, by Laurens
de Preme, of the _Ethics_, _Politics,_ &c., of Aristotle[298]. Some
specimens of the Javanese language were given by Capt. L. H. Davy.
Among printed books, the most noticeable purchase (besides the _Edd.
Pr._ of Livy, 1469, Lactantius, 1465, &c.) was that of a vellum copy of
the first edition of the Hebrew Pentateuch, printed at Bologna in 1482,
for £17 10_s._ Some sets of controversial and political tracts, with
other books, which had belonged to Thomas Brande Hollis and Dr. John
Disney, were bought at the sale of the library of the latter.
[293] The money was raised by loans of £2000 from the Radcliffe Trustees
and £3644 from the University Bankers. They were both repaid by the year
1820.
[294] De Backer's _Bibliothèque des écrivains de la comp. de Jésus_;
quatr. série, p. 93. 8vo. Liège, 1858.
[295] _Bibliogr. Decam._ iii. 429.
[296] See under the year 1852.
[297] The first MSS. of Dante which the Library possessed, came in the
Canonici collection; they are in number fifteen. This fact is worth
mentioning, on account of an extraordinary story told by Girolamo Gigli,
in his _Vocabolario Cateriniano_, p. cciii. (a book the printing of
which was commenced at Rome in 1717, but which was suppressed, by bull,
before completion), that in the Bodleian Library at 'Osfolk,' there was
a MS. of the _Divina Commedia_, which, from being employed in enveloping
a consignment of cheese (and so imported into England by a mode of
conveyance said to have been usually adopted by Florentine merchants,
with a view of spreading at once a knowledge of their luxuries and their
literature), had become so saturated with a caseous savour as to require
the constant guardianship of two traps to protect it from the voracity
of mice. Hence, according to this marvellous travellers' story, the MS.
went by the name of _The Book of the Mousetrap_! (See _Notes and
Queries_, i. 154.)
[298] Bodl. MS. 965.