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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'Extraordinary' 500-year-old library catalogue reveals books lost to time The Libro de los Eptome
'Extraordinary' 500-year-old library catalogue reveals books lost to time
The Libro de los Epítomes was a catalogue for Hernando Colóns 16th-century collection, which he intended to be the biggest in the world
His lifes work ... Hernando Colón. Photograph: Biblioteca Colombina (Seville)
It sounds like something from Carlos Ruiz Zafóns The Shadow of the Wind and his The Cemetery of Forgotten Books: a huge volume containing thousands of summaries of books from 500 years ago, many of which no longer exist. But the real deal has been found in Copenhagen, where it has lain untouched for more than 350 years. The Libro de los Epítomes manuscript, which is more than a foot thick, contains more than 2,000 pages and summaries from the library of Hernando Colón, the illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus who made it his lifes work to create the biggest library the world had ever known in the early part of the 16th century. Running to around 15,000 volumes, the library was put together during Colóns extensive travels. Today, only around a quarter of the books in the collection survive and have been housed in Seville Cathedral since 1552.
The discovery in the Arnamagnæan Collection in Copenhagen is extraordinary, and a window into a lost world of 16th-century books, said Cambridge academic Dr Edward Wilson-Lee, author of the recent biography of Colón, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books. Its a discovery of immense importance, not only because it contains so much information about how people read 500 years ago, but also, because it contains summaries of books that no longer exist, lost in every other form than these summaries, said Wilson-Lee. The idea that this object which was so central to this extraordinary early 16th-century project and which one always thought of with this great sense of loss, of what could have been if this had been preserved, for it then to just show up in Copenhagen perfectly preserved, at least 350 years after its last mention in Spain
The manuscript was found in the collection of Árni Magnússon, an Icelandic scholar born in 1663, who donated his books to the University of Copenhagen on his death in 1730. The majority of the some 3,000 items are in Icelandic or Scandinavian languages, with only around 20 Spanish manuscripts, which is probably why the Libro de los Epítomes went unnoticed for hundreds of years. It was Guy Lazure at the University of Windsor in Canada who first spotted the connection to Colón. The Arnamagnæan Institute then contacted Mark McDonald at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who passed it on to Wilson-Lee and his co-author José María Pérez Fernández, of the University of Granada, for verification. They sent me the photos. I was sitting on a beach at the time and I said youve got to be flipping kidding me. Its the major missing piece from the library, said Wilson-Lee. Its an amazing story. Instead of being a needle in a haystack, it was a needle in a bunch of other needles.
After amassing his collection, Colón employed a team of writers to read every book in the library and distill each into a little summary in Libro de los Epítomes, ranging from a couple of lines long for very short texts to about 30 pages for the complete works of Plato, which Wilson-Lee dubbed the miracle of compression. Because Colón collected everything he could lay his hands on, the catalogue is a real record of what people were reading 500 years ago, rather than just the classics. The important part of Hernandos library is its not just Plato and Cortez, hes summarising everything from almanacs to news pamphlets. This is really giving us a window into the entirety of early print, much of which has gone missing, and how people read it a world that is largely lost to us, said Wilson-Lee.
. . . .
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/10/extraordinary-500-year-old-library-catalogue-reveals-books-lost-to-time-libro-de-los-epitomes
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'Extraordinary' 500-year-old library catalogue reveals books lost to time The Libro de los Eptome (Original Post)
niyad
Apr 2019
OP
AllaN01Bear
(18,159 posts)1. the late fees must be huge !!!!
shame these books are lost to the ages .
niyad
(113,262 posts)2. a shame indeed. but, at least we know of them now. and, who knows- there may actually be some
copies of at least some of them running around--or decaying in someone's attic or trunk.
Aristus
(66,316 posts)6. I think this catalog will help in a search for the 'lost' volumes.
It's hard to know what you're looking for unless you know what you're looking for.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)3. Wow, but 'you've got to be flipping kidding me'?
They won't publish what people were reading then until 2020? Hope a lot is discussed before. This is going to be fascinating.
Thanks, Niyad.
niyad
(113,262 posts)5. you are most welcome.
MineralMan
(146,286 posts)4. Too cool!
murielm99
(30,733 posts)8. What a wonderful story!
This retired librarian thanks you.
Also, I appreciate the reference to Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
niyad
(113,262 posts)12. you are most welcome.
Hekate
(90,645 posts)9. This is a dream come true for bibliophiles.
My own heart is going pittypat. Wow. How wonderful.
--> <-- Books!
niyad
(113,262 posts)11. this bibliophile's heart is doing the same.
backtoblue
(11,343 posts)10. My heart would mend anew
I think I could live in a library! This is awesome