Wars have always been the enemies of books and libraries. But sometimes in spite of the destructiveness of wars libraries survive, for they can be considered prize booty. Such is the case with the library represented by the bookplate on the cover of this issue: the Biblioteca Palatina, as it came to be known.

            The story of this Renaissance library begins with Count Palatine Ottheinrich, who had his court in the venerable university city of Heidelberg. Ottheinrich was ruler of the Palatinate and one of the Electors of the Holy Roman Emperor. Interested in books, he began around 1543 to build up his small private, or “chamber,” library. His interest continued; he established rules for the library’s further development, and arranged that it have public access, both to the general populace and the university community. Books, especially manuscript books, came rapidly into the library, some from local sources such as other court collections and the Church of the Holy Spirit and some from afar. Noblewomen marrying into the count’s family, for instance, brought books with them. But perhaps the most important acquisition was the private library of the financier and banker Ulrich Fugger, who sold it when he sought refuge in Heidelberg in 1567. The count provided for the library in his will, and it continued to grow until the events of that devastating political and religious struggle, the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), overtook it.

            Simply stated, the Palatinate was Protestant, while its rich and powerful neighbor Bavaria was Catholic. Bavaria was ruled by the very ambitious and fervently Catholic duke Maximilian I, who, among his ambitions, desired to become an Imperial Elector. When the war broke out, Maximilian received substantial financial help from Pope Gregory XV. When he finally overran and conquered the Palatinate, including Heidelberg, the library, thereafter known as the Bibliotheca Palatina, was one of the rewards, perhaps the principal one, which the pope requested and received for his support of Maximilian. The library was then considered the greatest book treasure of Europe. It consisted of some thirty-five hundred manuscript books, as well as a number of printed books, and was valued at 80,000 crowns. Maximilian, in turn, did become Elector in 1623 at the expense of Count Palatine and at the instigation of the pope, in an embarrassingly illegal proceeding.

            Leone Allacci (in Latin Leo Allatius), a Greek scholar and theologian who was many years later to become librarian of the Vatican, hastened to Heidelberg to superintend the removal of the collection. Allacci arranged that the pope’s spoils, which included all of the manuscript books and most of the printed ones, be packed onto 50 wagons and escorted back to Munich by a detachment of 60 musketeers. In Munich the books were repacked into 196 cases and carried across the Alps on muleback to Rome, where they arrived on the sixth of August 1623.

            After the library had been installed in the Vatican, it lapsed into disuse, or as one observer put it, it remained preserved in its “original freshness.” Modern scholars have found it a very important source on Reformation history. Its special value seems to lie in its completeness as a Renaissance library belonging to a noble family. In addition, the library possesses a fine cross section of Renaissance binding styles. Although a portion of the collection was returned to Germany in the nineteenth century, the bulk of it still remains in the Vatican Library. Perhaps, given Germany’s history since the library’s removal, its present location may have been, after all, the safest place for it.

            The bookplate for the collection, a large armorial one, is somewhat unusual in that it openly proclaims the “theft.” The Latin motto may be translated “I am from that library which Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, took as a prize of war from captured Heidelberg and sent as a trophy to Gregory XV.” The plate also lists two titles which were presumably important to Maximilian. “Archidapifer” amounts to something like chief steward, apparently a ceremonial office at the imperial court, and “Princeps Elector” of course is his ill-gotten electorship. It also bears the arms of the ducal family in a delightfully Baroque frame, with the date “1623” in Roman numerals in the lower right corner. The plate was made in two sizes for the duke by a Munich copper engraver named Sadeler. The reproduction of the smaller two here is a substantial reduction of the original, which measures about 3½ by 5¾ inches.

 Phillip A. Metzger

Graduate School of Library Science

The University of Texas at Austin

 

Bookplate courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

[Originally published in Journal of Library History, vol. 13, no. 1 (Winter 1978): 57-59.]