Look on my works and despair. The inventories of lost libraries, like the shattered statue of Ozymandias, make us think on what we do not have. We can sense — but cannot touch — the arrangement of the benches to which the volumes were chained, and we can, if we are lucky, relate a listing’s entry to an extant manuscript. The study of inventories has a noble pedigree, from Leopold Delisle’s integrated listing of the collection of Charles V of France to the ongoing Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues. For Renaissance Italy, milestones have included Ullman and Stadter’s account of Florence’s San Marco (1972), and Antonio Manfredi’s I codici di Niccolò V (1994). More recently, SISMEL has a project to catalogue the catalogues of medieval Italy, with four volumes appearing to date. This endeavor is now supplemented by the first in a series of Texts and Studies, Angela Dressen’s discussion of the library of the Badia Fiesolana.

The Augustinian Badia was an institution fortunate in its friends, for its library provision was bankrolled by Cosimo de’ Medici. Dr. Dressen is equally fortunate, since most of the manuscripts survive: she estimates a loss of 10 to 15 percent and even that, as we shall see, may be an exaggeration. The majority live down the hill from the Badia (now the European University Institute) in the Laurenziana. Those codices include the inventory, itself an impressive humanist product (MS Fies. 227). It is the chosen focus of Dressen’s work, with her edition prefaced by a set of chapters. One discusses the founding of the bibliotheca, placing it in the context of mid-Quattrocento Florentine book production. Another is a “prolegomenon to a history of Florentine education,” considering the role of teaching at the Badia, and the place of its library in that. The edition of the catalogue appears as an appendix, accompanied by two others. The first is a manifesto for future work, briefly introducing a sample of the Fiesolani manuscripts in order to suggest the use of a new catalogue to replace that produced in 1792 by the inestimable Angelo Maria Bandini. The short paragraphs are said to provide “new descriptions [that] adhere to today’s bibliographic standards” (105), but exclude mention of measurements, quire structure, or ruling, let alone the identity of the scribe. So, it is said that MS Fies. 166 is written in “the clear, round handwriting of a scribe who had made many copies for the Badia” (111); it is not mentioned that the littera antiqua with its distinctive angled serifs has been identified as that of Piero Strozzi. The other appendix presents the well-known bibliographical canon of Tommaso Parentucelli; its inclusion is justified by the comparison Dressen makes between it and the conscious construction of the Badia’s collection. She explains that her “transcription … is mainly relying on Sforza [published 1884]” (147), though, she warns elsewhere, “this contains some errors” (31).

The edition of the inventory itself is presented in four columns, the first providing the catalogue entry, the second the present shelf mark (when the manuscript is in the Laurenziana), and the third and fourth cross-references, one to the Parentucelli canon and the other to the catalogue of San Marco. Dressen does not concern herself with identifying Badia manuscripts that have strayed from Florence. For instance, she notes that, while the inventory lists Pliny the Elder, only extracts of the Natural History now exist in the Fiesolano collection, adding “there might well have been another manuscript … now lost” (129). She does not comment on the identification of British Library, MS Harl. 2676 as that copy. Dressen says she provides “a diplomatic transcription” (113), though not by most people’s definition: as the volume’s plates show, the scribe laid out the page with title to the left and a record of the number of books in a work to the right; that latter information is omitted. He also gives rubricated brackets and numbers in the left margin signifying where works appear in the same volume; those too are not transcribed. This, then, is not a definitive edition of the catalogue but it is useful all the same. Dressen encourages us to consider the collection comparatively, alongside other Renaissance libraries, both real and ideal. Moreover, her work will hopefully entice others to follow her in metaphorically taking the route up from Florence to enter the Badia’s doors, set within its Romanesque facade.