Before Napoleon. Change and Continuity in the Italian Religious Book Collections

Despite the apparent continuity in the presence and cultural role of the libraries of religious orders in early-modern Italy, up until the Napoleonic appropriations, many profound changes affected these collections between the 15th and 18th centuries. During the 16th century the emergence of the printed book and the gradual disappearance of manuscripts, then the birth of the new regular clerical congregations encouraged an unprecedented growth of the conventual/monastic library holdings and a radical reorganization of the collections’ network inherited from the middle ages. These developments, and the adoption of more informal methods of access to the books interwove, bringing about a severe fragmentation of the orders’ book riches. Indeed, the first half of the 17th century was a very critical period, marked by the demolition of old library buildings and the constant dispersal of their holdings, which in turn affected some famous manuscript collections. in the last decades of the 17th century the negative trend was inverted and the beginning of the 18th century marked a revival of the religious’ collections that gave birth to a new network. But from the 1760s the local situations became very different, in connection with State interventions on the regular clergy. Consequently the orders’ library system showed – at the end of the century – profound differences, which were to condition the impact of the Napoleonic suppressions and to determine different ways of dispersal.