Guest post by Jillian Tomm, Postdoctoral Fellow in Rare Books & Special Collections

This volume, the Inventaire des manuscrits grecs & latins donnés à Saint-Marc de Venise par le cardinal Bessarion en 1468, records a number of Greek and Latin manuscripts, once owned by the fifteenth-century scholar Cardinal Bessarion (1403-1472), which formed the nucleus of the Bibliotheca Marciana of Venice. The list is heavily marked by a reader with a parallel and different set of numbers.

It is possible that this volume was used and marked by Bessarion specialist Lotte Labowsky, who published on Bessarion’s library. The volume is part of the Raymond Klibansky Collection—Klibansky and Labowsky worked closely for decades on several topics including Labowsky’s Bessarion work, and a number of books in the Klibansky Collection were previously owned by her. The handwritten numbers resemble those left by Labowsky in her corrections to Klibansky’s Latin edition of Locke’s Epistola de tolerantia.”

Inventaire des manuscrits grecs & latins donnés à Saint-Marc de Venise par le cardinal Bessarion en 1468 (Book)
Inventaire des manuscrits grecs & latins donnés à Saint-Marc de Venise par le cardinal Bessarion en 1468 (eBook)

Title page of “Inventaire des manuscrits grecs & latins donnés à Saint-Marc de Venise par le cardinal Bessarion en 1468”

Page 29 of “Inventaire des manuscrits grecs & latins donnés à Saint-Marc de Venise par le cardinal Bessarion en 1468”